Two Indians hurt in RUF attack

Soldiers marched down the single track with dense jungle on either side from Kailahun towards Daru this afternoon when the rebels hiding in the bushes fired. The Army immediately fired back into the jungle. A Chetak helicopter carrying out aerial reconnaissance in the area got the distress signal and landed on thetrack to fly the two injured soldiers to the field hospital.

Earlier in the day, there was jubilation in the Daru battalion headquarters as the 233 soldiers returned home after 75 days in custody. It was a strangehomecoming with battle-hardened soldiers crying out of sheer delight of seeing old comrades. Increasing their happiness was the fact that the soldiers had come out with their guns blazing with all their weapons and vehicles intact also after destroying RUF concentrations both at Kailahun and Pendembu.

The two officers who came out first were Major R.P. Punia, a six-feet-four-inches-tall mechanised infantry soldier and Captain Dhiraj Thapa, a five-feet-four inches para commando. Thapa was the first two enter Kailahun leading a small team of six commandoes. “I knew the area since I had been here earlier posing as an army truck driver taking the food convoy,” he said.

Today there was such a relaxed mood in Daru that the force commander Major General Vijay Kumar Jetley found time to play basketball with the jubiliant troops. “I am happy for a lot of effort went into the planning and coordination of this massive operation. It had to be executed with minute-to-minute precision,” he said.

His deputy Brigadier Randhir Mehta was still busy in the operations room for he said: “The operation is still not over.”

Meanwhile in the Signals Room, Major Jalaj Bhola and Major Sumit Mathur were still decoding intercepts from rebels. “The RUF is gearing up to strike at ourdefences according to these intercepts. We are taking precautions and strenghening whereever they are going to strike,” he said relaying the information to the soldiers on the ground.

At the field hospital, Majors S.K.Singh and Sameer along with a team of doctors and medical personnel operated upon the soldier trying to take out thesplinters of the grenade.

The UN force has come out of Kailahun and Pendembu. But Major General Jetley insisted it was not “pulling out” but merely “relocating” due to the changed circumstances. “As more troops come in we will deploy in other partsof Sierra Leone too. But we have learnt an important lesson from his operation and that is there should be no penny-pocket deployment,” he said. Troops willnot be deployed in small numbers that RUF can come and disarm them, he said.