JOIN USTwo teachers shot dead by terrorists in Srinagar
Less than 48 hours after three civilians were shot dead in Srinagar and Bandipora, unidentified militants killed two government school teachers, including a female principal, in the old city Safa Kadal area of Srinagar on Thursday.
A police official said unidentified gunmen fired upon the duo at around 11:15 am, leaving them critically injured. They were shifted to super-specialty SKIMS hospital where they were declared dead on arrival.
The deceased were identified as Supinder Kour, a Sikh who worked as the principal of the school where the incident took place, and Deepak Chand, a Kashmiri Pandit who was a teacher there.
A witness said three militants on motorbikes arrived at the school and asked the staff to move inside the principal’s room. “After establishing identities, the Muslim staff was asked to go out of the room. The assailants then got them out of the room and shot them mercilessly,” he said on the condition of anonymity.
The Resistance Front (TRF), floated after the Centre ended J&K's special constitutional position, has purportedly claimed responsibility for the attack on the social media platforms. "The Shaheed Gazi Squad carried out the targeted attack on two non-locals who were domicile holders and had harassed the parents of the students to salute the occupier's flag on August 15," a TRF spokesman said.
The Resistance Front is believed to be the frontal organisation of Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT).
On Tuesday evening, 68-year-old Makhan Lal Bindroo, a prominent businessman and the owner of a pharmacy in Srinagar's Iqbal Park, was shot at from point-blank range. Just an hour later a street vendor from Bihar was shot dead in similar circumstances in Lal Bazar area on the outskirts of Srinagar.
One more civilian was shot dead the same evening by the militants in Hajin area of north Kashmir’s Bandipora district.
J&K police chief Dilbagh Singh said that the killing of civilians is a move to damage and attack the age-old traditional communal harmony in Kashmir.
“This is an attempt to defame Muslims of Kashmir. Killing innocent civilians including teachers is a move to attack and damage the age-old tradition of communal harmony and brotherhood in Kashmir,” he told reporters outside Government Boys Higher Secondary School Sangam, Eidgah.
The police chief said that they had got some clues and leads about the killers in previous cases and that the fresh case will be probed too. “The killing of innocent civilians reflects frustration and barbarism,” he added.
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