Terror hits heart of Srinagar 
Asian Age, May 22, 2006

- By Our Special Correspondent 

Srinagar, May 21: Days ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s second roundtable conference on Kashmir beginning here on May 24, terrorists attacked a Congress Party rally in the heart of the city on Sunday, killing at least seven persons and wounding 22 others, including the Valley’s top police officer.

Both assailants were also killed by the security forces during a gunbattle that raged soon after their targeting the rally at Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir Municipal Park. The militants struck at the rally despite the apparently tight security cover, with the deployment of hundreds of local policemen and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel.

Officials said that those killed included three civilians and two local policemen, besides the assailants. However, a CRPF official on the spot put the number of fatal casualties among the civilians at five. Inspector-general of police (Kashmir range) K. Rajendra Kumar, the top police officer in the Valley, and DSP Sheikh Faisal Qayyum are among the injured.

A police press release issued here late on Sunday evening said that at 1.30 pm, a terrorist wearing police uniform tossed hand grenades and simultaneously opened indiscriminate fire from a AK-47 assault rifle at the rally, resulting in injuries to several police personnel and civilians. "The police and security forces personnel acted swiftly and eliminated the terrorist," it said. It added that while combing operations were under way, another terrorist was spotted in the nearby Polo Grounds, who also was killed in the encounter.

The dead have been identified as constables Farooq Ahmed and Muzaffar Ahmed, and civilians Nazir Ahmed Mir, Riyaz Ahmed Khan and Tanveer Ahmed Lone, besides of course the two terrorists. The 21 injured included a senior Congress activist, Mr Ghulam Ahmed Mir.

The rally was being held to commemorate the 15th death anniversary of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and the sneak attack was carried out minutes before chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was due to arrive to address it. On hearing about the attack, he immediately rushed to the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences to inquire about the injured. Several senior Congress leaders were, however, already present at the rally. According to reports, the president of the youth wing of the party in Jammu and Kashmir, Muhammad Amin Butt, was among those wounded.

The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the obscure Al-Mansoorin outfits both claimed responsibility for the attack, which left security officials stunned as they had claimed that the security arrangements were foolproof. The police and the CRPF had laid drop-gates and makeshift barriers on the roads leading to the venue of the rally and nearby alleys were blocked by barbed wire the previous evening. People were, however, allowed to walk in the park on Sunday but only after thorough frisking. The assailants managed to find their way to the venue despite all this, leaving the state’s security officials red-faced.

The CRPF and members of the local police’s counter-insurgency special operations group, however, soon began a mopping-up operation in the area. "It was seemingly a suicide attack," the officials said. Several angry Congress leaders talked of a "security lapse" and demanded a full-scale inquiry.

Soon after the firing stopped, reinforcements began evacuating people from buildings in the Polo View and Residency Road stretch, the city’s key marketplaces where the offices of several newspapers, private television channels and news agencies are also located — not far from the scene of the gunbattle. Several policemen and bleeding civilians were shifted to hospitals in ambulances and police vehicles.

People who had been brought in for the rally in chartered buses from different parts of Kashmir were seen running for safety amid the gunfire. The gunbattle also caused a commotion at the makeshift Sunday markets laid along the nearby Residency Road and Lal Chowk areas, where hundreds of men and women were busy doing shopping for used imported garments and household goods. Some of them were injured in the stampede triggered by the sudden gunbattle, witnesses said.

The attack was carried out three days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to arrive in Srinagar to preside over the second roundtable peace conference on Kashmir. The PMO has invited more than 30 mainstream parties and separatist groups to the conference. But most of the invitees from the separatist outfits have either refused to attend or are still undecided. Hardline leader Sayed Ali Shah Geelani has rejected the invitation, saying that it was aimed at "hoodwinking international opinion and buying time (for India) on the core issue of Kashmir," and that attending it would be a "sellout."