SRINAGAR, 18 October 2006 — Two local policemen were killed in sneak shootouts by the separatist militants who also carried out a powerful grenade explosion at the main hospital in north Kashmir headquarters of the Baramulla border district yesterday.
Bikram Singh, the driver of the official car of Kashmir inspector general of police was killed by militants as he parked the valley police chief’s car outside a shop in the uptown Batmaloo area of the summer capital Srinagar.
“Unidentified militants fired at driver Bikram Singh in Batmaloo area of the city. He was taken to hospital, but succumbed to injuries en route,” a senior police officer said here. Police said militants shot and killed another police constable in the Hazrtabal market a little distance from the Hazratbal main mosque.
A senior police officer said, “Constable Bilal was killed when militants fired at him from close range in the Hazratbal market yesterday afternoon near the State Bank of India branch there. He died immediately.”
In another incident, seven persons including three paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) troopers and four civilians were injured when militants targeted a posse of BSF inside the main hospital in north Kashmir’s Baramulla town, 57 kilometers from here. “The grenade lobed by the militants wounded three BSF troopers and four civilians in Baramulla hospital Yesterday afternoon,” a police officer told this correspondent.
Many window panes of the hospital building where the explosion occurred were shattered as panic gripped the patients and doctors inside.
