Seven security personnel killed in Pathankot attack

Lt Col Niranjan Kumar, a member of the elite National Security Guards Bomb Squad, was killed on Sunday morning while defusing a grenade along with four other security personnel at the site of terror attack as a part of the combing operation that continued the whole night.

The grenade exploded when the officer and other security men were trying to retrieve an improvised explosive device from the body of a slain terrorist. Three more security personnel, who were injured during the encounter with the terrorists on Saturday, succumbed to injuries at the military hospital taking the death toll to seven. One of them, Subedar Fateh Singh, had won a gold and a silver medal at the first Commonwealth Shooting Championships held in Delhi

in 1995. 

Five terrorists were neutralised by the security forces on Saturday. Among those battling for their lives in the hospital are 8 DSC personnel and a Garud commando. 

DIG border range Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh said that the joint operation carried out by the Army and Punjab Police was still underway. The combing operation, he said, continued throughout the night. The DIG claimed that the police had apprehensions that the terrorists had been hiding in the area. 

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), the DIG added, had taken over the probe into the terror attack on Pathankot Air Base.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the latest situation at the Pathankot air base. Both were present at a HAL function in Tumakuru in Karnataka.