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| May 2, 2003 | Friday | Safar 29, 1424 |
Another policeman killed in encounter
SANGHAR, May 1: Another police constable, Mustaqeem, was killed in the on-going police encounter in a banana filed in Saleh Waryal village near Tando Adam on Thursday.
Earlier, a policeman was killed and two others were wounded in the encounter on Wednesday.
The bandits are using rocket launchers and other automatic weapons while the police are using light machine guns.
Firing pattern of the bandits suggests that their three groups, each comprising two criminals, are entrenched at different positions.
The armoured personnel carriers with tyres have failed to operate in the banana orchard which has recently been watered. Therefore an APC with track wheels was called from Sukkur.
As soon as the APC entered the field, the bandits attacked it with rocket fire but it has carried on combing the banana field. So far, the APC has combed three or four of the 32 acres of banana field in which the bandits are hiding.
The APCs with tyres have been deployed at points where the bandits are exerting maximum pressure.
The criminals have repeatedly tried to storm towards the north. It seems that they want to leave the banana field and enter the adjoining sugarcane crop, spread over more than 500 acres of land.
The heaviest gun battle continued on Wednesday night, which began at about 11pm and continued till 6pm on Thursday.
Both the police and the bandits are trying to exhaust each other. At night, the criminals try to break the police cordon and police strategy is to maintain a tight siege at night and enter the dense banana crop in the day.
The police are fortifying the cordon around the banana orchard and are planning to engage the bandits on Friday.
Police personnel from Dadu, Thatta, Mirpurkhas, Hyderabad are taking part in the encounter.
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