Five killed in rebel attack on Kashmir police camp

Soldiers take positions outside a school after an attack against paramilitary personnel in Srinagar yesterday.

Agencies/Srinagar

Militants disguised as cricketers killed five paramilitary police in an ambush in Jammu and Kashmir’s main city Srinagar yesterday, officials said, in the deadliest attack for nearly five years.

Two gunmen from the local pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen, which claimed the attack, were shot dead after the assault on a police compound housing a barracks, school and playing field, the officials said.

A senior police officer said the extremists from Kashmir’s biggest rebel group pretended to be joining children for a game of cricket before taking out automatic weapons from a bag and throwing a grenade.

“They came into the compound carrying cricket gear in which they hid their weapons. We recovered weapons and grenades from their bags later,” Sudhir Kumar, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) spokesman, said.

Four civilians and four CRPF soldiers were injured in the attack, the police said.

The Kashmir News Service, a Srinagar news agency, reported it received a call from a Hizbul Mujahideen spokesman who claimed the “guerrilla attack” and warned that more would follow.

Federal Home Secretary R K Singh said in New Delhi the dead gunmen appeared “not local but from across the border” in Pakistan and added two other militants who were not involved in the attack might still be at large in Srinagar.

Yesterday’s deaths marked the deadliest single day for security forces since July 2008 when a landmine killed nine soldiers on a bus on the outskirts of Srinagar.

The attack comes as a 23-year anti-India insurgency has been on the wane.

Violence across the state has been at its lowest since the revolt began in 1989, boosting the vital tourism industry in the scenic Himalayan region.

But tensions have mounted since the execution last month of Afzal Guru over a deadly 2001 attack on the parliament.

Guru was convicted over the attack, but he retained wide support in Muslim-majority Kashmir where many said he had not got a fair trial.

Much of Kashmir has since been under repeated curfews while protests and strikes have disrupted daily life.

Police said a 24-year-old man, Altaf Ahmed Wani, was shot dead yesterday by paramilitary forces when they opened fire to stop people hurling stones at their armoured vehicle.

But several bystanders who said they witnessed the killing contested the account and said Wani was shot dead as he crossed a road and there was no stone-throwing.

Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah argued recently the central government should abolish emergency laws giving federal security forces in Kashmir legal impunity to shoot-to-kill.

The militant attack could undermine his campaign, which Abdullah sees as necessary to defuse resentment over alleged human rights abuses by the hundreds of thousands of troops in the region.

More than 47,000 people have died in the fighting by an official count while rights groups estimate up to 70,000 have lost their lives.

The Hizbul Mujahideen is fighting for the transfer of Kashmir to Pakistan.

Violence

In New Delhi, the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party slammed the government for not acting against Pakistan on terror.

“We have asked the government again and again but they are not taking any steps. At the time of the Mumbai attacks, we told the government that India should snap all ties with Pakistan. We also asked the government to stop the confidence building measures till Pakistan assures us that no more terrorist activities would take place from their soil,” BJP president Rajnath Singh said.

“No such action has been taken,” he said.

The last major rebel attack in Srinagar was in January 2010 when two militants from another pro-Pakistan militant group opened fire and took refuge in a hotel. Both were killed as were a policeman and a bystander.

Last October, gunmen opened fired on a popular hotel, killing a bellboy.

In May 2004, 28 troopers and their relatives were killed in a blast carried out by Hizbul militants in southern Kashmir.