'Quake Killed Over 3,000 Militants'

Intelligence sources have confirmed that over 3,000 terrorists who were waiting for an opportunity to cross into India from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir were killed in the October 8 earthquake.

A top intelligence officer told rediff.com that while hundreds of terrorists were killed because of the huge buildings crumbling, most others were killed due to massive explosions that took place because of fire breaking out in their ammunition dumps.

"This was nature's way of closing down terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," the officer said.

According to him, the figure of 3,000 was tentative and the number of militants killed could be much more.

Latest intelligence reports, collated almost a week after the killer earthquake hit Pakistan, hold that as many as 1,500 cadres of militant outfits in Pakistan perished in the disaster.
Though most militant outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) , Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) , Al-Badr and Tehrik-e-Mujahideen took a hit, Hizbul Mujahideen alone lost around 400 men.
At least a third of the 1,500 killed were hardcore jehadis, say intelligence officials, basing their assessment on a combination of human and electronic intelligence obtained from across the border.

Two hardcore militant outfits Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) have suffered major losses in the October 8 killer earthquake in terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir but militancy has continued in Jammu and Kashmir with the Army today saying it has killed 29 militants in the last one week.