Both fidayeen killed in Srinagar gunbattle
IGP orders probe into ‘firing’ on photojournalist; hotel building gutted

AHMED ALI FAYYAZ

SRINAGAR, Jan 7: Militants’ twenty-four-hour-long suicidal gunbattle with Police and CRPF at the business nerve centre of Lalchowk in this capital city today ended with the death of both the fidayeen as the hotel building occupied by them suffered extensive damage in a blaze and one of the three critically injured civilians died at a hospital. In all, two militants, one driver of J&K Police and one civilian have got killed in the strike that has deflated different political parties’ claim of normality and demand of demilitarization in Jammu & Kashmir.

Inspector General of Police Kashmir, Farooq Ahmed, told Early Times that after evacuating nearly 600 civilians from different buildings in the congested business centre of Lalchowk and maintaining a tight cordon overnight, Srinagar District Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) stormed the 4-storeyed Hotel Punjab at 0900 hours. Conducting room-to-room searches, commandoes of Special Operations Group and CRPF forced both the hiding militants to come out of rooms they had occupied. Both were gunned down in nearly two-long-long fierce encounter.

Both the sides used AK-56 rifles and lobbed hand grenades, leading to the loft of the building catching fire. Even as the fire-tenders sprinkled water from two directions, two of the top storeys of the hotel building were destroyed. IGP said that only one CRPF personnel sustained a gunshot would in today’s encounter. He said that a total of 10 persons, including two CRPF personnel, had sustained injuries in the 24-hour-long shootout and resultant gunbattle.

IGP said that after the death of one Police driver, who had died in the beginning of the firing at Lalchowk yesterday, one of the three critically wounded civilians died at SMHS Hospital in the wee hours today. He maintained that both the militants killed in the operation belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba. IGP Kashmir said one of the duo was identified as Manzoor Ahmed Bhat alias Usman S/o Ghulam Rasool Bhat R/o Seer Jagir, Sopore, and another one as Qari, a Pakistani national.

However, a caller claiming to be the spokesman of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen told KNS over telephone that three militants of his organization had participated in the fidayeen operation. He identified one of them as Manzoor Ahmed Bhat alias Usman of Sopore and claimed that remaining two were from Balochistan, Pakistan. According to him, all the three militants had died in the gunbattle.

Simultaneously, another caller, who identified himself as the spokesman of Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, told KNS over telephone that three militants of his outfit had carried out the operation against the Indian security forces. He claimed that two of the group, namely Abdul Qadir and Abdul Jabbar, had got killed in the gunbattle but their accomplice, Abdul Kareem, had managed to escape late last night and had succeeded in reaching back to his hideout. Officials dismissed it all as “trash” and insisted that only two militants of Lashkar-e-Toiba were in the encounter with Police and CRPF. Both of them got killed, claimed the officials.

Director General of Police, Kuldeep Khoda, personally supervised the operation. At the conclusion of the operation, he told mediapersons that only the evacuation of hundreds of civilians, trapped in different hotels, shops and buildings, had delayed the final assault of Police and CRPF. He called it a surgical operation and claimed that minimum it had ended with the minimum possible damage. He refused to accept that it was a suicidal strike and claimed that both the militants had been spotted and commanded to halt before they exposed themselves, fired and took shelter inside a hotel. He said that Police were investigating as to what exactly the militants had been planning in the capital city.

Thirteen civilians wounded yesterday included a videographer of a television news channel. Local daily Greater Kashmir photographer Aman Farooq was hit in his thigh by a bullet minutes after the gunbattle had ended. He alleged that a probationary Dy SP, Safdar Samoon, KPS 2005-batch, took out his pistol and fired straight into his thigh. He was rushed to SMHS Hospital where doctors discharged him after medical treatment.

Different media organizations in Srinagar condemned the incident and demanded inquiry into the circumstances that led to “firing” on a photojournalist. IGP Kashmir told Early Times that he had immediately ordered an inquiry and action would be taken against the guilty if anybody in Police or security forces was found to have fired on the mediaperson. He said that there was no reason for the Police official to open fire well after the gunabttle had ended, that too on a prominent photojournalist when all eyes were on Lalchowk.

In a disturbing development for the Government, scores of youth from the nearby Maisuma locality staged anti-Police and anti-India demonstration and expressed their solidarity with the militants while shouting slogans in their praise. They also engaged in pitched battles and stone pelting on Police even as the operation was underway at Lalchowk.

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