|
9 Killed in Kashmir Attack
Suspected Islamic militants lobbed a grenade and opened fire Tuesday on Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir, killing nine of them and wounding 27 others, police said. Six Islamic militants sneaked into the pilgrimage transit camp in Nunwan, about 55 miles southeast of Srinagar, said Nirmal Raj, commander of the Central Reserve Police guarding the camp. He said police killed one of the snuffies.Thousands of unarmed Hindoo pilgrims! How Islamically heroic! Too bad about the armed coppers guarding them, isn't it? The annual pilgrimage from the city of Jammu has been targeted by Islamic militants in the past. Guerrillas killed 15 pilgrims last year and 35 in 2000. So far this year, 24 have died in six attacks, including Tuesday's ambush. No group claimed responsibility for this year's attack. "Who's up this year to attack the Hindoos?" Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani blamed the attack on Al-Mansuriya ("the Victorious"), a militant offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. How can you get more "militant" than Lashkar? Chamanlal Gupta, India's junior minister for defense, went the scene of the attack and said the dead militant carried a suicide note declaring the aim of the mission was to disrupt the pilgrimage. In it, he asked to be buried at a Muslim shrine in the same area. Gupta said the man carried an AK-47 with an inscription of "Mujahedeen Cassette House, Lahore," Pakistan's second-largest city. If I was the insidious head of RAW, the Indian intel agency, there would be a mysterious explosion that destroyed the Mujahedeen Cassette House and its proprietor and all his arms and ammunition in Lahore... In other parts of the disputed region, four suspected militants and three soldiers were killed, a news report said. In northern Kashmir, two suspected militants in army uniforms opened fire at an army camp and tried to enter it in the border district of Kupwara, 45 miles north of Srinagar. They were killed by army guards, the report said. There were no immediate details on the two other clashes. Just the typical day-by-day body count in J&K. Sure hope they don't have a Minister of Tourism, cuz he'd die of boredom really quickly... Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2002-08-06 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=6176 |