Clashes in Kashmir Valley as Lashkar men killed in gunfight

Srinagar: Several parts of J&K’s summer capital Srinagar erupted Wednesday after the killing of two Lashkar-e-Tayyaba militants and a civilian in a gunbattle in the city’s Fatah Kadal area earlier at dawn. A policeman was also killed in the clash.

The police said the role of the civilian killed with the militants is being investigated. A police spokesman said: “The complicity of Rayees Ahmad, who was part of the group in providing shelter and logistics to the militants, is being investigated.”

Earlier J&K director-general of police Dilbagh Singh and Srinagar SSP Imtiyaz Ismael had claimed three LeT militants were killed in the firefight which started overnight after the J&K police’s counter-insurgency Special Operations Group and CRPF personnel began a cordon-and-search operation at Syed Ali Akbar in Fatah Kadal “on specific inputs about the presence of militants in a private house”.

The DGP said that during the operation civilians were evacuated but while the operation was on the militants opened indiscriminate fire from inside the house, killing SOG jawan Kamal Kishore and injuring two others belonging to the J&K police and the CRPF.

The police identified the slain militants as Merajuddin Bungroo and Faid Mushtaq Waza, residents of Fatah Kadal and neighbouring Khanyar. The police chief said Bungroo, a top Lashkar militant, was involved in a number of terror attacks, including killings and weapon-snatching. “He was a big threat to peace, particularly in Srinagar,” Mr Singh said. Waza, 18, had joined the militants’ ranks in March this year and was involved in several incidents, he added.

A police spokesman said the militants were offered a chance to come out of the house and surrender, but instead they opened fire at the security forces, setting off the gunbattle. A report said the owner of the house suffered cardiac arrest during the fighting.

A police statement said the complicity of the third youth, Ahmad, is being probed. It said incriminating materials, including arms and ammunition, had been recovered from the encounter site.

Soon after the encounter, irate crowds clashed with the security forces in various parts of Srinagar. The riot police and Central forces fired teargas shells and used pellet shotguns to quell stone-throwing mobs in several places, witnesses said.

Amid the heightening tension, the authorities closed schools and colleges across Srinagar and suspended Internet services “as a precautionary measure”.

Earlier, around 20 reporters and photographers were beaten by policemen as they were covering the Fatah Kadal encounterevoking widespread protests and condemnation by journalists’ bodies. The Kashmir Editors’ Guild said the gunfight was already over and the attack on reporters and videographers took place as the house the militants were killed in was on fire. “At the time of the illegal police attack on media, there was no gunbattle, no protest and the only activity was firefighters extinguishing the fire.” The guild alleged the police action suggested that the counter-insurgency establishment “wishes to frighten the media and stop this institution from covering anything which the grid dislikes”.

A deputy superintendent of police, Zaffar Ahmed, and two other policemen were injured as militants hurled a grenade at a naka party in Pattan area of Baramulla on Wednesday afternoon. In another incident, suspected militants attacked an Army camp in Rafiabad. But the grenade tossed at a camp of the Army’s 32 Rashtriya Rifles in Rafiabad’s Trakpora village exploded outside the premises without causing any casualties, the police said.

The police claimed one of the militants who hurled grenade at the police naka party at Pattan was arrested after a long chase. A police statement said a naka party was deployed at Baba Teng Pattan after “credible” inputs about the movement of militants on the Baramulla-Srinagar highway. “During checking, while a passenger vehicle was signalled to stop, militants boarding the vehicle lobbed a hand grenade at the police party. In this incident one police officer, Dy SP Zaffar Mehdi, and two other policemen, Shabir Ahmad and Ashiq Hussain, sustained injuries and were evacuated to hospital. They are stable now,” the statement said.