Alert in J-K as intel issues Pulwama-like attack warning on Burhan Wani's encounter anniversary

Security forces have been put on high alert after the intelligence agencies issued a warning of Pulwama-like terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir on July 8, which happens to be the encounter anniversary of Hizbul Mujahideen’s poster boy Burhan Wani. His killing in an encounter with security forces in 2016 had triggered a massive unrest in the Valley that left nearly 100 people dead and thousand others, including security forces, injured. According to an ABP report, the intel sources have reportedly said that terrorists are likely to use IED and snipers for the dastardly attack.

In the biggest terror attack in nearly two decades in Jammu and Kashmir, 42 CRPF personnel were killed in Pulwama on February 14, 2019. On February 8, a week before the attack, the Jammu and Kashmir police had reportedly sent an intelligence input to the CRPF, BSF, ITBP, SSB, Army and the Air Force warning of a possible IED attack. Headlined "extremely urgent", the letter sent on behalf of the Inspector General of Police, Kashmir, asked all security agencies to "sanitize areas properly before occupying your place or deployment as there are inputs that IEDs could be used".

More than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force personnel, many of them returning from leave to rejoin duty in the Valley, were travelling in the convoy of 78 vehicles when they were ambushed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway at Latoomode in Awantipora in south Kashmir.

Earlier in May, the security forces got major success after a special team gunned down Zakir Musa, the chief of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, a group allegedly affiliated with Al-Qaeda in a village in Tral of South Kashmir on May 25. One AK-47 rifle and a rocket launcher was recovered from the site of encounter. Zakir Musa was an Ansar Ghazwat-ul Hind chief and a A++ terrorist. Zakir Musa, a close associate of Burhan Wani who was killed in 2017, was a militant of Hizbul Mujahideen who succeeded Burhan and later headed the Al Qaeda affiliate. He had taken to militancy in 2013. In 2012 he left for Chandigarh to study engineering at Ram Dev Jindal college but left it midway to join militancy.

Later in June, al-Qaeda announced a new chief for its India-specific wing Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGH). Hameed Lelhari alias Haroon Abbas has replaced Musa and Ghazi Ibrahim Khalid will be his deputy, Abu Ubaidah Hafizahullah, a spokesman of the group said in an unverified 11-minute video.