Pakistan Army recruits Afghan fighters to carry out attacks in J-K, forces on alert

Pakistani Army has recruited about 60 war-toughened Afghan fighters who would be pushed across the border to carry out attacks on security forces in Jammu and Kashmir, intelligence inputs suggest.

Security forces have been alerted about the possible infiltration.

According to the intelligence inputs, "Around 40 to 60 Afghan terrorists" belonging to various terror groups and armed with sophisticated weapons have been recruited by Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to carry out attacks in Jammu and Kashmir."

Documents accessed by ANI show that a dozen fighters will be carrying out attacks using suicidal jackets or weapons in the region. They will be trained in war-torn Afghanistan and then received by Pakistani Army in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The fighters will then, the inputs show, will be transported to launch pads for infiltration in Kashmir to send them across the border in India.

According to the alert prepared with the intelligence inputs, ISI had meetings with multiple fighter groups in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province where it selected the fighters. They would, the alert shows, leave the province by September 21. The terrorists would try to infiltrate in small groups possibly taking multiple routes in a gap of 24-48 hours, the agencies suspect.

The decision to recruit Afghan fighters, highly placed sources claim, was taken at a meeting held in the third week of August in Bahawalpur of Punjab province. The agenda of the meeting, as per the inputs, was to conduct attacks in Jammu and Kashmir.

Intelligence agencies have asked local agencies and security forces to update information regarding such movements of the suspects.

Sources said that the forces deployed in Jammu and Kashmir have been briefed about the foreign terrorists' possible infiltration and asked to keep corroborating the latest information.

Pakistan has violated ceasefire several times and has been trying to send terrorists in India to carry out attacks in Jammu and Kashmir since the government abrogated Article 370 last month.

In a related development, the Indian Air Force has put its airbases in and around Jammu and Kashmir on orange alert based on inputs of possible terrorist attacks on the bases.

(ANI)

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