Bengaluru among 22 airports warned of attack; Mangaluru too on high alert

Bengaluru, Oct 7: As many as 22 airports across the country, including civil airports in India's western states and other important ones like those in Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, have been put on a high alert as part of heightened security arrangements in the wake of surgical strikes by the Indian Army on terror camps in PoK.

Airports in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru have been asked to step up vigil and security to tackle any attack or sabotage. There have been intelligence inputs, warning of a terror strike. Elaborate security arrangements have been made to thwart any terror bid.

Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat -- all border states -- have, like Delhi, been marked for careful vigil. The Civil Aviation Security Bureau has also written to the police chiefs in each state, the CISF or paramilitary force which guards airports, as well as to state-run and private airlines alerting them to the security threat.

Mangaluru International Airport too has been put on high alert even though it is not one among the 22 airports that received intelligence warning regarding possible terror attack, said MIA director J T Radhakrishna.

While baggage will be subjected to more random and detailed checks, parking lots as well as loading areas used by airport vehicles will be more carefully monitored.

A high security alert is standard for the festival season. But agencies are concerned about a terror attack in retaliation for last week's surgical strikes in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir which saw soldiers targeting seven terrorist launch pads or gathering areas.

Yesterday, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on security at the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. Intelligence agencies have warned of nearly 100 terrorists being prepped to cross the de-facto border before winter sets in and the routes into Kashmir are covered with snow.

The Line of Control has been simmering with cross-border firing and violations of the ceasefire.

This morning, soldiers killed three Pakistan terrorists who tried to target an army base in the border district of Kupwara in Kashmir. Maps and arms recovered established that they were from Pakistan, said the army.

The cross-border strikes carried out by India a week ago were in response to a deadly attack at an army camp in Uri in Kashmir last month, in which 19 soldiers were killed by a group of four Pakistani terrorists.