Conflicts & War

2 non-local laborers die in latest targeted attack in Indian Kashmir

Srinagar, India, Oct 18 (EFE).- Two migrant laborers were killed in a grenade attack in Indian Kashmir, police said on Tuesday, blaming militants for the latest targeted violence in the disputed region.

Police said a suspected militant, arrested later, threw an explosive device at the rented accommodation of non-local workers in a south Kashmir village last night.

The attack occurred as the workers were sleeping, a police officer told EFE.

Police identified the slain laborers as Monish Kumar and Ram Sagar, both residents of the northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Additional Director General Police Vijay Kumar told reporters that the attacker, “a hybrid terrorist,” who lobbed the grenade was arrested in the morning.

Police use the term “hybrid terrorists” for the so-called “radicalized” youth who are not listed as militants but carry out attacks and return to their everyday business without being identified.

The attack on non-Kashmiri migrant laborers came days after a suspected militant killed a Kashmiri Hindu man in the south Kashmir district of Shopian.

According to police, militants fired at Pooran Krishan Bhat from the minority community of Kashmiri Hindus at his home in Shopian.

Pooran’s killing drew strong condemnation and triggered protest demonstrations against groups fighting the Indian rule in Kashmir.

A group of protesters on Monday vandalized the Srinagar office of the Hurriyat Conference, the umbrella organization of Kashmiri separatist groups.

The angry protesters pulled down the signboard of the separatist amalgam and scribbled “India” on its main gate.

The protesters, who identified themselves as “corporators and civil society members,” told reporters that the Hurriyat Conference was responsible for the targeted killings.

The Hurriyat denounced the “hooliganism…by sponsored goons with police as bystanders.”

“It is a petty attempt at diverting attention from the authorities failure to safeguard the lives of Kashmiri Pandits (Hindus),” a Hurriyat statement said.

The group condemned “the unfortunate killing” of Kashmiri Hindus, blaming the government for exploiting it to promote “propaganda against Hurriyat whose activists and leaders are either in jails or under house detention.”

Most of the front-line Hurriyat leaders are in jail since New Delhi abrogated the semi-autonomous status of the disputed region on Aug.5, 2019.

Suspected militants have carried out several targeted killings on non-locals and minority community members amid fears that the government was trying to change the demography of the Muslim-majority region.

The idyllic Kashmir region remains at the heart of the territorial dispute between India and Pakistan after their independence from British rule and the 1947 partition of the sub-continent.

The two countries have fought two of their three wars over the territory they rule in parts but claim in its entirety. EFE

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