9 cops die in raid on Kashmir camp
AFP, Srinagar
Nine Indian policemen were killed and eight injured in an attack on their camp by one or more Kashmiri militants in the summer capital of insurgency-hit Indian Kashmir, police said yesterday. The nine were killed during fierce fighting through the night that ended when security forces just after 8:00 am (0230 GMT) Thursday gunned down a militant who had stormed the camp in the Raj Bagh area of Srinagar about 12 hours earlier, Kashmir's police chief Gopal Sharma told reporters at the scene. Four of the injured policemen were critical, doctors said. "The operation has ended and we have recovered the body of a militant," the spokesman for India's Border Security Force (BSF) Neeraj Sharma told AFP. Security forces were searching the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp in case more than one militant had been involved in the attack. Shashi Nayak, a cook at the camp, and a riflemen were rescued by BSF troopers and police from the second floor of a concrete building around 7:00 am. "It was a horrifying experience all through the night," a pale and visibly shaken Nayak told AFP. "The two of us bolted the door from the inside. But he (the attacker) continued to fire at the door but couldn't open it," he said, as he watched his colleagues trying to defuse a hand grenade recovered from the rebel. "We had exhausted our ammunition. Had he succeeded in opening the door he would have killed us," Nayak said. He said he believed there were two attackers but that one of them managed to escape around midnight. Two lesser-known rebel groups al-Mansoorain and the al-Madina regiment claimed responsibility for the attack in telephone calls to local media. Al-Mansoorain claimed responsibility for a similar attack last month that killed five policemen and two rebels. Sharma said militants usually increase violence ahead of India's independence day, celebrated every year on August 15. Militants and separatist politicians observe the event as a "black day". "They (rebels) always increase violence around republic and independence days," said Sharma. He said rebels were diverting their resources to Srinagar, which houses the offices and residences of all the top officials and politicians, including Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. Indian Kashmir is in the grip of an Islamic insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1989.
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