Terrorists try to derail talks, kill 10

Islamic militants dressed in Indian Army uniforms killed 10 people in sequential attacks on a police station and an Army camp about 20 km apart in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua-Samba region on Thursday. In the Army’s counterattack, all three gunmen aged 16 to 19, who are believed to had sneaked into Kathua from across the border overnight, were also killed. Those slain were an Army lieutenant-colonel and three jawans, four policemen, a shopkeeper and a truck conductor. The twin terror strikes come just three days before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to meet Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session. Speaking in Frankfurt on his way to Washington, where he will meet US President Barack Obama on Friday, Dr Singh called it “one more attack and barbarism by enemies of peace”, and made it clear that his plans remained unchanged. “We will not allow it to derail our attempts to find a resolution through the dialogue process,” the PM said. Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said the “dastardly” attacks were aimed at derailing the talks between the two Prime Ministers. “Given our history and given the timing as well as the location of the attacks, one thing is obvious: that the aim of these terrorists is to derail the proposed dialogue between the PMs of India and Pakistan,” he said at a press conference here. Later on Thursday, Mr Abdullah flew to Jammu to visit Hira Nagar police lines “to personally lay wreaths on the bodies of martyrs and salute their martyrdom”. He also met the family members of the slain men and tried to console them. He also visited the Hira Nagar police station and the Army camp to show solidarity with the security forces. The CM has called an emergency meeting of the Unified Headquarters in Jammu to assess the two militant attacks in Hira Nagar and Samba, official sources said. In an interview, he said: “The best answer is to convey our concerns to Pakistan strongly.” The As Shohada Brigade, an obscure group which first surfaced in July 2003, claimed the responsibility for the twin attacks. On July 22, 2003, the group had owned up to a similar attack on an Army camp in Akhnoor sector of Jammu, in which seven jawans were killed and several others wounded. That attack was carried out “in retaliation” to Pakistan cleric-politician Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s controversial statement that the Line of Control be made a permanent border, as a way to resolving the Kashmir problem forever. In the latest attacks, the group of three militants arrived outside the Hira Nagar police station in Kathua district close to the international border at around 6.45 am in an autorickshaw used to ferry vegetables from the nearby village of Jandi, stormed the police station after killing the sentry at the gate and shot dead four policemen. The slain men were identified as ASI Rattan Singh, selection grade constable Kuldeep Singh, constable Shiv Kumar and SPO Mukesh Kuma. While coming out of the police station, they also shot dead a local trader, Suresh Kumar, who was pulling up the shutter of his PCO outlet in front of the police station. A report, not confirmed by the police so far, said another shopkeeper Firdous Ahmed was also shot by the militants. They then hijacked a tempo truck seized by the police on Wednesday evening after killing its conductor Muhammad Feroz, a resident of Srinagar, and drove it to the Army camp in Samba district, where all three gunmen were later killed in a gunbattle with troops. Reports said the gunmen walked into the officers’ mess shouting jihadi slogans and killed at least four Armymen, including Lt. Col. Bikram Jeet Singh, second in command of 16 Cavalry, an armoured corps unit, and sepoys Kiran Kumar Reddy, M.S. Rao and Daya Singh. Lt. Col. Singh, who was staying at the mess with his family, was shot twice in the stomach at point-blank range. Army helicopters were hovering over the site during the four-hour-long firefight at the Army camp. The CO of 16 Cavalry, Col. A. Uthaiah, is among the dozen-odd people injured in the twin attacks. He was shot twice and is in a critical condition. Quick reaction teams from 2 Sikh and 14 Assam units were rushed to Samba, and men from the CRPF and local police force also joined the Army in the attempt to flush out the fidayeen (suicide attackers), who hid themselves in a building before they were killed. Reports said the 16 Cavalry armoured regiment had three gates. The gunmen shot the sentry at one of the gates and walked into the officers’ mess shouting slogans. Police soruces said the militants had earlier abandoned the truck on the Jammu-Pathankot national highway a kilometre from the 16 Cavalry camp, and perhaps travelled in a different vehicle before carrying out the attack on the Samba camp. The police has taken the truck driver into custody for questioning, reports said. The militant outfit As-Shohada, in a statement to a local news agency KNS, said its three men — Mohammad Akram, Furkan-ul-Haq and Engineer Waqaas — carried out the attack at the police station and killed “almost all the police personnel stationed there”. It added that later they moved into the Army camp at Samba and killed “three Army officers”. The outfit said the three militants were in touch with its Jammu-based commander during the attack, and that all the slain militants belonged to the Jammu region. Intelligence sources have said units in the Jammu area had been warned that fidayeen attackers could launch a strike. This is the worst attack in Jammu in 10 years. The chief minister said “forces inimical to the interests of Jammu and Kashmir” had always tried to derail the peace process between India and Pakistan. “These (attackers) are forces that have always been inimical to the interests of Jammu and Kashmir... They have always tried to derail any peace process that is sought to be initiated. They have sought to keep the turmoil in the state on. This is another step in that direction,” he said. “Clearly there will be political pressure brought to bear on the Prime Minister to resist any further movement in the dialogue process. Obviously it is for the Prime Minister and his advisers to decide how to proceed further in this matter.” The CM added: “As far as we in this state are concerned, we have always been committed to a peaceful resolution of all problems that have existed in this state, and we hope that it is the course that is followed.” He said it “would be an injustice to the soldiers and civilians who were killed” if the dialogue process was stalled due to the strikes. “They did not lay down their lives to allow the terrorists to succeed in their designs. They laid down their lives for peace,” he said. Mr Abdullah said Islamabad should be told in clear terms that it “cannot be business as usual” if such attacks continued. “But we need to convey this message sitting face-to-face with them,” he said.