Two CRPF cops gunned down in broad daylight in Pattan

Militants loot weapons of slain cops, vanish in highway township

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Nov 10: Striking in the turbulent Kashmir valley after a pause of nearly three months, militants today gunned down two head constables of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and disappeared in the highway township only after looting weapons of both the paramilitary soldiers. Taking it as a wake up call, authorities have begun to set up a fresh counter-insurgency grid while launching a search for over 50 heavily armed militants who are now reportedly hiding in Bandipore-Sopore-Sumbal belt of north Kashmir.

Informed sources in North Kashmir told Early Times that in the forenoon today at least two militants appeared at the crowded market in Pattan, on Srinagar-Baramulla highway and they simultaneously fired upon two armed soldiers of CRPF in point blank range. While head constable B Teja died on the spot, HC Om Prakash later succumbed to injuries at a hospital. Eyewitnesses as well as officials said that as soon as the targeted soldiers collapsed, militants disarmed them both and decamped with their automatic rifles.

Amid stampede in the township, that often remains dotted by Army and CRPF personnel, Police and security forces reached the spot and made unsuccessful attempts to trace the killers of the two paramilitaries. Officials said that both the militants were believed to be still hiding somewhere in the town but house-to-house searches were not advisable in view of apprehension of firing on the exposed search party from the militants’ hideout.

After months of street turbulence and demonstrations, that are now fading out fast, militants today attacked security forces and succeeded in killing two armed personnel in broad daylight. As a matter of strategy, militants had avoided making attacks on security forces as well as their civilian targets since the sudden eruption of mass demonstrations and street clashes in June this year. Even as Police and security forces killed around 40 militants during the last five months of the civilian strife in different operations, one-odd incident of the guerrilla strike came on the residential house of the ruling National Conference’s Sopore MLA, Haji Mohammad Ashraf, at Dangarpora village in Sopore area on August 22.

A day earlier, on August 21, militants had struck on a Gujjar family at Tangmarg village in foothills of Pirpanjal mountain range and gunned down one Mohammad Hussain Gorsi’s wife, Shakeela, and her daughter, Zareena. During the same night, suspected militants shot dead a civilian, namely Ghulam Nabi Wani, at his home in Chakora village of Pulwama district.

According to a local news agency, KNS, a spokesman of the guerilla outfit, Hizbul Mujahideen, claimed that militants of his organization had eliminated two CRPF soldiers at Pattan. A spokesman of Jamiatul Mujahideen also claimed earlier that the operation at Pattan was the handiwork of his organization.

Highly placed authoritative sources said that after today’s strike at Pattan they were expecting more militant attacks on the hard as well as soft targets from two militant organizations in North Kashmir. They said that militants were expected to raise the level of violence with firing and bomb blasts against Police and security forces. They revealed that a thick concentration of 50 to 60 freshly inducted and well-trained militants was establishing base in Bandipore-Sopore-Sumbal belt. According to credible reports, over two dozen youth had disappeared from Sopore alone in the last two months and all of them were suspected to have joined the militant organizations.

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