On Saturday, just minutes before the Indian Army was able to successfully neutralise a lone militant in Baramulla, Jammu and Kashmir, it lost one of its two-year-old dogs named Axel after being shot three times in the head.
‘Axel was dead before it could have been rushed to a vet’, an official said. Akhtar Hussain Bhat, a lone insurgent, was reportedly killed in the confrontation, while two troops and a policeman also sustained injuries. The five-hour-long battle claimed the life of Axel, a light-brown Belgian Malinois.
The jihadist opened fire on security personnel as they blocked off Wanigam hamlet, according to Mohammad Rayees Bhat, the senior superintendent of police in Baramulla. After the incident, he said that an AK rifle, three magazines, and a bag had been found at the scene.
Officials claim that a well-trained assault dog is capable of tearing into a militant’s hiding place and inflicting lethal injuries. They said that if the dog had approached the terrorist much closer, the confrontation would have ended much sooner. Axel was a skilled assault dog who had participated in a number of successful missions in the past.
These animals may be fitted with cameras and dispatched inside homes or other structures to provide precise information on the whereabouts of terrorists as well as other facts like the weapons and ammunition they are carrying. The elite police or military squad plans their assault after learning the exact location of the insurgents and makes sure they don’t suffer any fatalities.
As per officials, Axel just began training diligently with the dog master at the Baramulla dog unit facility. He performed admirably in a few operations in the northern areas. ‘We had recently taken him to an encounter site in the Tulibal area of Sopore. Two militants were killed there and he did his bit’, an official said, adding, ‘the entire unit is sad’.
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