Three policemen were killed and another critically injured today in Jammu and Kashmir, in three attacks by terrorists in a span of four hours.
The policemen were reportedly ambushed when they were on their way to a village in Shopian in the Kashmir valley, to investigate a land dispute. The police said the three, one head constable and two constables, were unarmed when terrorists opened fire on them.
The terrorists, dressed in army fatigues, first released two civilians who were travelling with the policemen.
Hours earlier, terrorists had shot at a police officer in a bus on its way to Pattan in Baramulla district.
The police said the terrorists, on spotting the officer, first tried to hijack the bus. They later abandoned the plan and fired at the officer before escaping when the bus stopped in a traffic jam.
The officer, Ghulam Mustafa, was critically injured. The driver took the bus to a police post where the officer was taken to a hospital.
In the third incident, a civilian was injured in Tral in south Kashmir. The police say he was attacked on suspicion that he was an informer for the security forces.
The spurt in attacks coincide with an alert in Delhi after intelligence warnings of the possibility of a suicide attack along the lines of last month’s attempted ambush on an army camp in Samba by the Jaish-e-Mohammed, based in Pakistan.
Two terrorists were killed after a six-hour shootout; they were dressed in army uniforms.
A note found near one of them said, “We salute the martyrs who gave their lives for this attack. Next meeting in Delhi.”
A day before that attack, two other members of the Jaish-e-Mohammed had stormed a police station in Jammu’s Kathua District, killing three security personnel and two civilians and injuring 11 others. The terrorists were also killed in the shootout.
Intelligence agencies say the attacks suggest that a number of Jaish-e-Mohammed members have crossed the border into India in the last few days.
