Agencies/Srinagar

 

 

A policeman is seen through the damaged windshield of a car used by militants after a shootout in Srinagar yesterday

Police in Jammu and Kashmir said yesterday they had shot dead the top commander of a Pakistan-based militant group blamed for a series of local attacks, including an assault on the state assembly in 2001.

The chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Sajjad Afghani, and his bodyguard were killed in a gunfight along the banks of Dal Lake in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital, senior police chief S M Sahai told reporters.

Afghani, who was also known among the militant ranks as “Qari Hamad,” was one of the region’s most wanted militants and active in north Kashmir, Sahai said, calling his killing “a major breakthrough” that had averted an attack.

Describing Afghani as being at the top of the wanted list of terrorists in the Kashmir Valley, Sahai said the guerrilla leader had come to Srinagar to organise a major terror strike. This was established by the recovery of arms and ammunition from him.

“He had been active for the last eight years. He had recently masterminded an attack at the residence of SP (superintendent of police) of Sopore. He also masterminded militant attacks in Qamarwari area of the city last year and the attacks in Pattan town in which two CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) troopers were killed,” Sahai said.

Afghani’s primary areas of activities were Rafiabad, Sopore and Tarzu areas in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, the official said.

The police chief said the JeM chief and his guard were moving on Dal Lake Foreshore Road when their car was intercepted by security forces. The duo started firing, triggering a gunfight that ended after the two were killed.

Tension gripped the otherwise busy Foreshore Road and adjacent areas as the heavy exchange of gunfire started.

“Both the militants were Pakistani nationals,” the officer said.

It was the first major gunfight in Srinagar since the shooting of three young men in November who police said were JeM militants. Human rights groups questioned the police claims, saying they were students.

For more than 20 years, militant groups in Kashmir have fought against Indian rule, murdering police and soldiers in the highly militarised Himalayan region.

The assault on the state assembly in 2001, claimed by JeM, left about 40 people dead.

The violence has claimed at least 47,000 lives, according to the official count.

In a separate incident yesterday, a police spokesman said the body of a 35-year-old man with his throat slit was recovered in a forest 45km northeast of Srinagar.

Three members of the same family were also critically injured yesterday in a grenade explosion in Kupwara district 100km north of Srinagar.

“Two boys and their sister were injured when they fiddled with a live grenade which they have found near their residence,” the police spokesman said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Army’s commander in Jammu and Kashmir reviewed the situation along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China during a visit to Ladakh region, a defence spokesman said.

Northern Command chief Lt Gen K T Parnaik visited eastern Ladakh where he reviewed the state of “defence preparedness” along the 646km-long LAC after reports of incursions by Chinese troops.

The army commander also visited the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, the spokesman said.