Two CRPF men killed, three injured in Jammu and Kashmir's Pampore

LeT militants carried the attack, says IGP Kashmir

Two paramilitary CRPF men were killed and three others injured after militants attacked a joint security forces’ party in Pampore area of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district on Monday.

“Two militants from Lashkar-e-Toiba came on a motorbike and fired indiscriminately at the CRFP Road Opening Party (ROP) at Kandizal near Pampore. Two CRPF men died in the incident and three others sustained injuries who are stable,” Inspector General Police (IGP), Kashmir, told reporters at the site of the incident.

He identified the attackers as Saifullah, a Pakistani militant and another one a local. “Hunt is on to track them down and I am hopeful they will be neutralized soon,” the IGP said and added, the attackers managed to flee from the spot.

While Srinagar-Jammu national highway is 270 km long, it is the 35-km stretch between Bijbehera town to Pampore in south Kashmir that is turning out to be a death trap for security forces. In the last five years, militants have targeted security forces frequently on this segment, resulting in dozens of casualties to security forces.

The IGP Kashmir said that militants find it easy to target security forces on the highway. “The highway is a busy place where hundreds of civilian vehicles pass every day. If we retaliate, there will be civilian causality,” he said.

The highway connects the Valley with the rest of the country and is used to carry supplies to the Srinagar-based 15 Corps. Adil Ahmad Dar, a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) militant had rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a bus carrying troops of the CRPF, killing over 40 paramilitary men on February 14 last year on the national highway in Pulwama.

In the backdrop of the deadly attack, the J&K government had barred civilian traffic to ply on the national highway from Baramulla to Udhampur for two days every week. The restrictions raised hue-and-cry across Kashmir and the ban was revoked after nearly two months in May last year.

Counterinsurgency experts say that militants have reasons to choose the stretch of the highway as an attacking base. One of the reasons they say is that River Jhelum runs close to the national highway which helps militants to leave the area soon after the attack.