TERRORISM - 2008 - Indian Social Institute

Study says civilians lost 650,000 guns (12)
UNITED NATIONS: One of every 1,000 civilian-owned guns in the world is lost or stolen and can
wind up in the hands of militants in nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, a Swiss institute says in a
survey released on Monday. Most of the lost guns flow to nations that “rarely engage in some of
the most basic verification procedures,” said Jurg Streuli, a Swiss diplomat and representative to
the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Among the other countries affected by this
diversion of small arms are Colombia, Sri Lanka, Somalia and Liberia. As many as 650,000
weapons owned by civilians have gone missing, says the annual Small Arms Survey compiled by
researchers at the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies,
They flow from manufacturers, wholesalers, gun shops and homes to local thugs, organized
crime, armed groups, insurgents, terror organisations and nations under an arms embargo, the
survey says. Most of the weapons are sold or stolen on the black market from military and
government stocks. The annual survey said last year that civilians worldwide now have access to
650 million small arms — from handguns to semiautomatic rifles — in an arsenal that far outstrips
what is held by police and militaries. — AP (The Hindu 16/7/08)
Two militants die in J&K gunfight (12)
Srinagar: July 16: A fierce gunbattle that broke out between a group of militants holed up in a
private house at Warapora on the outskirts of the northwestern Sopore town of Jammu and
Kashmir and the security forces on Tuesday evening has so far left two militants and a policeman
dead and about a dozen security personnel wounded, reports said. The members of the local
police’s counter-insurgency Special Operations Group (SOG), along with CRPF and Army
columns, entered the sleepy village, about 57 km from here, at twilight on learning about the
presence of militants there. While zeroing on the target house, they came under a barrage of
gunfire, wounding nine security personnel, including four soldiers, three policemen and two CRPF
jawans. Two more soldiers, including an officer, were injured in the ensuing firefight, reports said,
adding that one of the injured policemen, identified as SPO Abdur Rashid, succumbed on
Wednesday morning. Police and Army officials in Srinagar said that two militants belonging to
Jaish-e-Mohammed were also killed. They have been identified as Hilal Ahmed Sofi of Warapora
and Asgar Ali, believed to be a Pakistani national. An earlier report had suggested that their
accomplices, who could be two or more in number, continued to resist attempts by the security
forces to storm the building. But a statement issued by the police in Srinagar said that the
encounter in which three residential houses were damaged has ended with the killing of both the
militants. Reports from Warapora said that the Army fired mortars to destroy the militant hideout
and that a lieutenant colonel of the Army was also injured in the clash. In a separate incident,
suspected militants kidnapped two persons, Ghulam Muhammad and Hakimuddin, from a
seasonal shack in the mountainous district of Doda on Tuesday afternoon. The police said that
the bullet-riddled corpse of Ghulam Muhammad was found in a mountain stream of the
area.(Asian Age 17/7/08)
Srinagar attack: ‘manual wire technique’ foiled jammers (12)
SRINAGAR, JULY 20: The Army has started investigating how militants managed to successfully
ambush an Army convoy on the Srinagar-Baramulla highway on Saturday evening, despite
sophisticated jammers—supposed deterrents to explosives since they block all electronic devices
with a certain reach — that were moving with it. The Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack on
the convoy left 10 soldiers dead and 17 others injured. To prevent Army convoys from being
attacked by powerful IED and car bomb attacks, the military had recently started moving jammers
with them. Brigadier K A Muthanna who was the first senior Army commander to reach on the
spot told The Indian Express that it is extremely difficult to prevent such attacks, since they are
meticulously planned. “A lot of planning has gone into this attack and every aspect is being
examined,” he said. Defence spokesperson, Lt Col Anil Mathur added the investigations were on
taken up to evaluate how militants managed to target the convoy in the presence of jammers.
“One possibility is that militants might have manually triggered the powerful IED as the convoy
was passing on the highway,” he said and added, “all possibilities are being explored by the Army
experts. Mathur said that due to the road-widening activity on the highway, there was a