Car bomb kills 5 cops, woman

Police said militants targeted a moving police bus. Giving details, Inspector General of Police, Kashmir range Farooq Ahmad said militants had fitted an improvised explosive device (IED) in a cooking gas cylinder and then placed it in a car. The car was parked some distance from the main gate of the jail. “As the police bus reached near the car, the militants triggered off the bomb,” IGP said.

Eye witnesses said the police bus was thrown in the air and it landed on the opposite side of the road after getting extensively damaged. The five policemen inside the bus and a woman, who was walking on the road, died on the spot. The impact of the blast was such that the car in which IED was placed was blown into pieces.

The window panes of the neighbouring houses were also damaged. “When the blast occurred, I was inside my house. It seemed as if an earthquake had rocked the place. The window panes of our house were damaged,” described Mushtaq Ahmad, whose house is located nearby.

He added that when he came out he saw heavy smoke and dust. The police bus was in a very bad shape and extensively damaged. “A woman was lying dead on the spot. The injured policemen and civilians were crying for help,”Mushtaq recalled. After some time police reached the spot. They extricated the bodies and the injured from the bus. The injured were removed to hospitals. The whole area was sealed.

The IGP said the police bus was on its way from the Central Jail to Pulwama in south Kashmir. It was returning to Pulwama after dropping some prisoners at the jail.
Meanwhile, Jamiatul Mujahideen (JeM), a militant group has owned responsibility for the blast. Its spokesman Jameel Ahmad told the local news agencies on telephone that more such attacks would be carried out.

DH News Service