A street vendor from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh was killed while three SSB personnel and 14 other civilians received injuries in a grenade attack on Hari Singh High Street in Srinagar on Monday.
The deceased street vendor was identified as Rinku Singh by the local police. He was earning his livelihood by selling items of daily use.
Meanwhile, two seriously injured civilians, identified as Aijaz and Fayaz Ahmed, were being treated in SMHS hospital till the time last reports came in.
Large number of local residents were present in the area to purchase items of daily need when unidentified terrorists hurled a grenade on SSB personnel, deployed there on security duty around 1.27 pm.
This is the second grenade attack in the same area in the last one month. Five civilians were injured in a similar grenade attack on October 12.
The aim behind targeting local residents and security personnel was to spread panic in the area, witnessing routine business activity during day time.
Soon after the grenade attack took place senior police and officers of paramilitary forces rushed to the area to assess the ground situation. Recently, police had arrested a local terrorist from Sopore. He was tasked to throw grenade in busy markets and petrol pumps. In a statement police spokesman said, “return of normalcy and opening of shops is unnerving the terrorists and their handlers sitting across in Pakistan”.
In another incident, police on Monday claimed they had unearthed a terrorist hideout inside Apple orchard in Sopore area. According to police, the hideout belonged to Lashkar-e Toiba terrorists Sajad Hyder of village Brat. Police said, the apple orchard was owned by his maternal uncle. Police said, Sajad Hyder used to bring, hide and even train new recruits inside the hideout.