SRINAGAR, 10 September 2003 — A policeman was killed yesterday during an attack by suspected militants on a former minister in Kashmir while 12 other people, including a young girl, were reported killed elsewhere in the restive state.
Police said militants opened fire at Ghulam Ahmed Shah, former state forest minister, during a function in the village of Sopat, 85 kilometers south of Srinagar, injuring his two police guards.
“They were removed to hospital where one of them died,” a police spokesman told AFP.
He said the shooting sparked panic at the function and people were seen running for shelter.
The gunmen also fled the area, but not before snatching two rifles from the VIP’s wounded security guards.
Shah, who escaped unhurt in the attack, is associated with the once-ruling National Conference. He lost his fight for a seat in the state assembly during elections late last year.
Meanwhile, one of seven rebels who held India’s military at bay for six days in the dense jungles of southern Kashmir was shot dead yesterday after he attacked police with grenades, police said. Kashmir state police Inspector-General P.L. Gupta told reporters the militant was killed in the Chinkara forest near the Kathua border district, about 80 kilometers east of Jammu.
The rebel was not carrying a rifle but when a local village defense committee and police tried to arrest him, he threw grenades at them. Police immediately gunned him down, Gupta said. The police chief on Monday said India’s armed forces had called off a marathon operation to flush out the seven militants the military said were hiding in the dense forests after a hunt by around 1,500 soldiers came up empty.
In another incident in the restive region, police said a young girl was killed and eight other people injured yesterday in a hand grenade blast near a police barracks in southern Doda district.
The girl died instantly and three of the injured were in critical condition in hospital after the grenade exploded in an alley behind the police barracks in Doda, a police spokesman said. A policeman was killed in a landmine explosion in the village of Donli Garhaiter, on the outskirts of Doda overnight, police said, adding Indian troops shot dead two militants in the neighboring village of Upper Labar hours before the explosion.
In other incidents, suspected rebels shot dead three Muslims, one of them an ex-Indian Army soldier, in the districts of Anantnag, Rajouri and Udhampur, the spokesman said. Troops shot dead two more rebels in the southern district of Anantnag yesterday, police said.
Two more rebels were shot dead during encounters with security forces in Pulwama and Kupwara districts overnight, police said.
An upsurge in violence since the shooting down of senior rebel commander Ghazi Baba by Indian border guards on Aug. 30 in Srinagar has left 119 people dead.
Meanwhile, a widening rift between moderate and hard-line separatists in Kashmir threatens to weaken public support for them, to the delight of New Delhi, analysts said yesterday.
The crisis inside the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has deepened with a breakaway hard-line faction claiming it and not the more moderate leadership was the “real” separatist alliance.
“Instead of concentrating on the movement they (separatists) have been busy hurling accusations and counteraccusations at each other,” said Shaukat Ahmed, a leading analyst and writer in Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.
