Days after the police claimed Srinagar has been freed from active militants, gunmen in a sneak attack fired on the CRPF in the heart of Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital, injuring seven jawans, two of them seriously on Wednesday.
The police and witnessed said that a CRPF vehicle on way to city’s Maharaj Ganj police station from the Srinagar Central Jail was targeted by two motor cycle-borne militants at Victory Crossing, Rainawari, with Kalashnikov assault rifles. However, a CRPF spokesperson Sudhir Kumar said the militants struck when the lorry was dropping jawans belonging to its 82 Battalion for patrol duty at 6.55 am.
The injured jawans were quickly shifted to city’s Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) where the condition of two of them, including driver constable Anil Saxena, is stated to be critical. Islamic Front, an obscure outfit, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The attack came on a day when a general strike brought life to a standstill in the Valley to commemorate the anniversary of May 29, 2009 incident in which two young Shopian women were allegedly raped and subsequently murdered by unknown persons which had sparked off widespread protests in the Valley. However, the CBI probe report had described these as “accidental deaths”.
Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani had issued the call for May 29 but deferred it by one day to facilitate a religious festival of Kashmiri Brahmins.
at historic Khirbhawani temple.