NEW DELH: The Indian army has deployed for the first time Israeli-built spy planes to track Islamist guerrillas in Kashmir, officials said on Tuesday.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) were first used over the Kishtwar mountain heights in southern Kashmir on December 17, two days after militants raided an arms dump in the region’s Singhpora town, the officials said.

“We conducted sorties over two days and the data we downloaded from the UAV were vital,”? a senior official from the army’s aviation wing said in New Delhi.

The drones, fitted with high-powered cameras, flew for several hours on each sortie.

“The drones failed to detect enemy movement but returned with very valuable information for our mappers,”? the officials said, adding that the UAVs were after Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrillas suspected to be behind the arms raid. afp