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The two buildings, sources said, had been bolted from outside to prevent those inside from escaping before being set on fire, suggesting that the terrorists had a high degree of knowledge about their targets.
Officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), probing Sunday’s terror attack on the Army camp in Uri which left 18 soldiers dead, believe that the terrorists spent at least a day in the mountains above the brigade headquarters complex, observing their target. The bulk of the fatalities, NIA sources told The Indian Express, took place in a cook-house and store room which burned down during the attack. The two buildings, sources said, had been bolted from outside to prevent those inside from escaping before being set on fire, suggesting that the terrorists had a high degree of knowledge about their targets.
Launching their attack from the western side of the complex, the four-man assault team first shot a sentry, before three headed towards tents where the soldiers were billeted, and the two buildings. The fourth terrorist moved towards the officers’ mess.
Investigation sources said their hopes of proving that the terrorists began their journey in Pakistan now rest on retrieving data from a damaged Global Positioning System (GPS) set recovered from the attack site.
National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) engineers have been tasked with attempting to recover data from the Garmin eTrex GPS set, one of two which the terrorists are believed to have used to guide them along their hike, cutting across the Haji Pir pass before reaching Uri.
The second GPS set, Army sources said, was too badly damaged during the fighting for data to be recovered.
Sources said the NIA had also taken DNA samples and fingerprints of the four terrorists before their bodies were buried Monday. “These will be preserved as evidence, and can be used to determine matches in future if necessary,” sources said.
NIA chief Sharad Kumar reached the attack site Tuesday and was briefed on the manner in which the attack was carried out and the evidence recovered from the site so far.
But until now, little hard evidence has emerged to link the perpetrators of the terror attack in Uri to specific jihadist groups in Pakistan, NIA officials said.
Four Kalashnikov rifles used by the terrorists, and handed over by the military to investigators Monday, bore no markings or insignia of any kind, sources familiar with the ongoing investigation said. There were also no military markings on barrel-fired grenades destroyed by the Army Monday, or on launchers fitted on the Kalashnikovs.
Lt General Ranbir Singh, Director General of Military Operations, had told reporters Sunday that the weapons had Pakistan markings. NIA officials, however, underlined that syringes, painkillers, other medications and packets of ready-to-eat food carried by the terrorists bore the markings of several Pakistani manufacturers, linking the perpetrators to that country.
“All groups infiltrating from Pakistan carry this kind of kit,” an NIA official said, “so it doesn’t tell us anything very specific.”
The ICom-manufactured handset used by the terrorists, intelligence sources said, matched a device recovered from Bahadur Ali, a Pakistani national arrested in July. The device was used to communicate with the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s main control station, code-named Alpha3.
An NIA official said the fact that the Uri attackers used a similar set was not, in itself, conclusive evidence that the Lashkar carried out the strike. “ICom is a well-known manufacturer of high-trade tactical wireless equipment,” he said, “and its products are widely used, even by law enforcement.”
The NIA, the official said, would be seeking details from ICom on the set that was sold.
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