SRINAGAR, 8 January 2005 — Three people were killed and five others injured yesterday when militants attacked the income tax office in Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar, witnesses and police said. A paramilitary officer told reporters that one or two militants stormed the tax compound, killing a paramilitary trooper, a policeman. One militant was killed.
Four security force personnel and an income tax official were also injured in the attack, which continued after dark. “Militants hurled grenades and fired indiscriminately while forcing their way in,” the officer said.
A blaze swept through the upper floor of the fortified three-story building and many people, including women, had to be rescued by ladder. About 60 people were rescued from the building in the city’s Barbar Shah area. “I was rescued by photographers and local journalists who brought me out using a ladder,” Aijaz Ahmed, an income tax official said.
The attack and the subsequent fire also sparked panic in the area as residents living in Barbar Shah started fleeing their houses. Income tax officials said most of their records had burnt in the fire. The office is guarded round the clock by paramilitary forces and all entrants are frisked twice.
“The attackers hurled hand grenades and rained bullets from automatic rifles on the CRPF guards manning the bunker at the main entrance. One CRPF soldier died on the spot and the fidayeen later went inside the building and killed a policeman,” said the officiating senior superintendent of police in Srinagar, Syed Ahmad Syed.
Syed rushed to the spot immediately along with heavy paramilitary and police reinforcements and the IT building in the heart of summer capital Srinagar was surrounded.
Security forces engaged the fidayeen in a fierce gunbattle during which the building caught fire. Panic gripped the state administration as there were around 70 staff members and visitors inside the building when the attack occurred.
As the top floor of the building caught fire due to heavy exchange of automatic fire between the holed-up militants and surrounding troops, the local police, members of the state fire services department and the security forces, however, managed to evacuate all the trapped local IT staff and others by putting up a ladder near a rear window.
“I had just returned after offering Friday prayers. I was sitting in my office room and suddenly there was a loud sound followed by bursts of automatic weapons fire,” said a shocked Riyaz Bhat. “We tried to hide under the tables and office chairs as we all panicked. We then took shelter in a room in second floor.”
“The first thing I did when I entered the room was to throw down the gas cylinder which is used in heating stove. The woman employees and officials panicked. The screams and shrieks of the woman officers and the employees rented the air. It was a heartrending scene.”
Fire tenders used water canons which almost deluged the top floor to douse the raging flames. “Fortunately all civilians that included the staff of the income tax department were rescued unharmed,” said Kashmir Zone police chief Javed Ahmad Mukhdoomi.
Even as the security forces and police engaged the militants in the gunbattle some paramilitary soldiers stationed inside the building managed to jump down as the fighting raged.
The operation has been called off for the night even as the tight cordon is in place and the area lightened so that no holed up militant escapes under the cover of darkness. “We have reports one militant is still holed up inside the building. Troops shot dead one militant and his body is lying inside the complex,” Mukhdoomi said.
