In 1st drone strike, two explosives dropped at IAF Jammu station

Jammu: In what could be the first use of drones in a terror attack on vital installations, two bombs were dropped at the IAF station in Jammu airport in the early hours of Sunday.

Two Indian Air Force personnel were injured in the explosions that took place around 1.40 am within six minutes of each other. The first blast ripped off the roof of a single-storey building at the high-security technical area of the airport manned by the IAF in Satwari area on the outskirts of the city. The second one was on the ground, officials said.

"The attack at the IAF station in Jammu is a terror attack," Jammu and Kashmir police chief Dilbag Singh said.

He said the police and other agencies were working with IAF officials to unravel the plan behind the attack. A team from anti-terror probe agency National Investigation Agency (NIA) was also at the spot. It was not immediately clear from where the drones had taken off and investigations were on to ascertain their flight path, officials said. Investigators scanned CCTV footage, including from cameras installed on the boundary walls of the airport, in an effort to determine from where the drones came. However, all the CCTV cameras focused on the roadside, officials said.

Drones cannot be detected by radars deployed at border areas to monitor enemy activity, they said, suggesting that a different radar system that can detect drones as small as a bird be installed. The drones dropped the explosive material and were either flown back across the border or to some other destination during the night, the officials said.

The aerial distance from the Jammu airport to the international border is 14 km.

While officials were investigating the drone attack, another major strike was averted when a person, probably owing allegiance to the banned Lashker-e-Taiba, was arrested along with an improvised explosive device (IED) weighing around six kg, the director general of police said. "The suspect has been detained and is being interrogated. More suspects are likely to be picked up in this foiled IED blast attempt," Singh said.

Officials said three more people have been rounded up for questioning.

Jammu and Kashmir Police has registered an FIR under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, officials said, indicating that the case is likely to be taken over by the NIA.

"The NIA is already supervising the investigation at the scene of the blast after joining the probe," one of the officials said.

The FIR was also registered under relevant sections of the Explosive Substances Act and the Indian Penal Code at the Satwari police station on the application of a junior warrant officer of the IAF, he said.

Meanwhile, militants shot dead a special police officer and his wife in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on Sunday, while their daughter suffered injuries. The ultras barged into the house of SPO Fayaz Ahmad at Hariparigam in Awantipora area of the district around 11 pm and opened fire on the family, official said.