NEW
DELHI, July 14 (IslamOnline) - Twenty seven people were
killed and over 35 injured when suspected Kashmiri separatist
militants struck a slum locality on the eastern edge of Jammu city in
Jammu & Kashmir state Saturday night, July 13.
The
police said the laborers died when “terrorists” opened fire in a
poor housing cluster.
This
is the first major attack since the May 14 attack in the same region
in which 32 people were killed and which almost led to a war between
India and Pakistan. Over a million soldiers are still standing
eyeball-to-eyeball on both sides of the borders amid little sign of
thaw or demobilization.
Over 35
people injured in today’s incident were taken to Government
Medical College Hospital in Jammu where doctors say some are in
critical condition. According to reports from Jammu, the dead include
ten women, nine men and a three-year-old child. Some of them were
killed on the spot. Most of the victims are believed to be migrant
workers from other parts of India.
Dilbagh
Singh, Jammu’s deputy inspector general of police, said that
investigations were underway to find out who is behind these attacks.
He was quoted by NDTV news channel before midnight Saturday, as saying
that “There are militants there. So far the encounter is still on
and so it is difficult to tell how many of them are there. We will
know that once this is over. It is all hard to say where they are
from, this encounter has to get over before we can say anything.”
According
to news agencies and TV channel reports from Jammu, the militants,
estimated to be between three to eight in number, came down from the
nearby mountains last evening, had tea at a roadside tea-stall in
Kasim Nagar at the outskirts of Jammu city before lobbing
grenades
at the locality of poor Hindu laborers at around 1930 hours.
At
the time of the attack the laborers were watching the India-U.K.
cricket match. Allegedly the militants were dressed in Hindu priest
robes. A gun-battle lasted half an hour but it took the police over
three hours to evacuate the injured and the dead to hospital.
According
to daily newspaper, the Kashmir Times, Sunday, July 14, the
assailants managed to flee to the nearby Bhathandi Rakh forest area
taking advantage of darkness. The shoot-out took place near a police
party which was conducting a routine searches on the National Highway
by-pass.
The
Kashmir Times reported local residents as saying that a nearby
police post was watching the whole incident like “mute
spectators.”
The
newspaper reported some resident’s allegation that
some of the people lost their lives in police firing. “Soon after
the police reached the spot they started firing indiscriminately
resulting in the increase of the toll,” it added.
The
Kashmir Times quoted local residents as saying that police
reached the spot “after making it sure that the ultras have fled.”
So
far no militant group is reported to have claimed responsibility for
the attack which comes in the backdrop of the alleged rise in
cross-border infiltration in the past two weeks.
According
to the Jammu-Kashmir state police chief, however, Lashkar-e Toiba
(LeT) is suspected.
India
did not immediately react to the attack, but it is feared that the
assault will sharply raise tensions with Pakistan which is blamed by
New Delhi for most of the militant strikes in India.
Pakistan
denies this and claims that the militants are local Kashmiris.
In
a separate incident Saturday in Kashmir, two militants of the LeT and
two civilians, including a woman, were killed in different encounters.
The
two LeT militants were killed in two separate encounters at Chatabal
in Srinagar and Kralagund-Pajgan in Anantnag districts early Saturday
according to police sources.
However,
locals alleged that Mushtaq, a district commander of LeT, was arrested
from Beerwah area of Budgam district and shot dead in a “fake
encounter” at Chatabal in Srinagar early Saturday.
