Eight people, including four personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), were wounded when militants exploded a grenade in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district on Wednesday afternoon. A militant outfit Tehreekul Mujahideen (TeM) claimed that they hurled the grenade to target the CRPF men on duty.
Deputy Inspector General of Police (south Kashmir range) Nitish Kumar said that unidentified militants tossed a grenade on Khanabal-Pahalgam road near a college. The splinters injured eight people — four civilians and an equal number of CRPF personnel.
This is second grenade attack in the town in past five days. On July 25, suspected militants hurled a grenade in a bus stand killing a 55-year old ice-cream vendor.
Sources said that panic gripped the south Kashmir town, 50 kilometers from here, after the blast as people rushed for cover suspecting a stand-off between militants and security forces. However, when no exchange of fire took place, the situation returned to normal after an hour. Militant outfit TeM claimed responsibility for the attack saying the target were the CRPF personnel. A spokesman of the outfit told local news agency CNS that the local CRPF battalion was the target for its “oppression and repression of local youth and passing comments on womenfolk.”
Police and paramilitaries launched a manhunt for the attackers in the area but no arrests were made so far.
Meanwhile, security forces recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition during a search operation in forests of frontier Kupwara district. A Defence spokesman said that after a tip-off, the security forces cordoned off Mughalpora area in Kupwara district where a militant hideout dug under a tree was found and busted.
“One AK 56 Rifle, Pika Belt without rounds, one Chinese pistol, seven UBGl grenades, two Pakistani grenades, two smoke grenades, one Chinese grenade, M-16 Rifle rounds and two radio sets were recovered,” the spokesperson said.
The Army also claimed that a lashkar-e-Tayyeba (leT) operative was apprehended from a village in Sopore along-with a Chinese pistol. The operative has been identified as Ubaid Tariq Untoo, alias Fari, a resident of Kralteng village of south Kashmir’s Tral area. Untoo, Army said, was the main accused in a blast case that occurred on June 20 in a police vehicle ferrying an under-trail militant Waheed Noor Khan Sudan of PoK.
The mysterious blast killed Sudan and a policeman escorting him. Police said that militants had handed over a grenade to the under-trail on a day when he was presented before the Chief Judicial Magistrate and he exploded it during his travel back to Srinagar Central Jail. Sudan was handcuffed when the blast occurred.