India races to fix Kashmir fence damage

KAMAN POST, India, Sunday (Reuters)

Indian troops are rushing to repair a border fence in Kashmir, badly damaged by the heaviest snowfall in decades, to prevent fresh incursions by separatist guerrillas, a senior army officer said.

Last year, Indian army engineers fenced off most of the so-called Line of Control, a 742-km (460-mile) military line that divides Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, in what is seen as an ambitious attempt to curb the influx of anti-Indian militants.

But the concertina wire barrier -- which had helped reduce the number of militants slipping in from the Pakistani side -- was damaged at several places after the heaviest snowfall in four decades in February, an Indian army brigadier said.

"In some places the damage is about 50 to 60 percent, in others it is 25 or 30 percent," the brigadier, who did not want to be named, told Reuters at India's last military post on the frontier in Kashmir.

"In some places, the fence is under 20 or 25 feet of snow. The terrorists can just walk over the fence, there is so much snow," he said. "In other places it is fractured with huge gaps or many portions have just been swept away."

"We have started repairs this month and have to complete it by the end of May. Otherwise, infiltration will pick up significantly from June when the summer makes the movement of terrorists easier in the mountains," he said.

The fence, built well inside Indian territory, passes through some of the most inhospitable terrain in the subcontinent, covering jungles, rocky Himalayan mountains, slopes covered by snow in winter, deep gorges and valleys with swift streams.

It consists of two or three rows of concertina wire, about three metres (10 ft) high, electrified and connected to a network of motion sensors, thermal imaging devices and alarms acquired from the United States and Israel.