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J&K: Five migrant labourers shot dead by alleged militants in Kulgam

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J&K: Five migrant labourers shot dead by militants in Kulgam
The attack comes on a day a delegation of 23 European Union MPs arrived in Srinagar to assess the situation in the state after the Centre scrapped its special status under Article 370 on August 5.
Express Web Desk |New Delhi |Updated: October 29, 2019 9:23:53 pm

Five non-Kashmiri labourers were shot dead, another injured by militants in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district Tuesday, news agency PTI reported. Earlier in the day, militants opened fire on CRPF personnel stationed at a school in Drabgam in Pulwama district. No injuries were reported.

The attack comes on a day a delegation of 23 European Union MPs arrived in Srinagar to assess the situation in the state after the Centre scrapped its special status under Article 370 on August 5. There was a complete shutdown in the city and at least four people were injured in numerous clashes between protesters and security personnel in various parts of the Valley ahead of their visit.

On Monday, suspected militants shot dead a trucker after he had parked his apple-laden vehicle on a road in Anantnag district. In a separate incident, at least 19 civilians were injured after militants hurled a grenade in Sopore town in north Kashmir. Unlike the previous victims, who were not J&K residents, Dutta hails from the Katra region of Jammu.

Five persons, including three truckers, a fruit trader and a labourer, had earlier been killed in similar attacks this month in south Kashmir.

On October 7, suspected militants shot dead Rajasthan resident Sharief Khan, a truck driver, in Sindhu Shirmaal village of Shopian. On October 16, suspected militants shot dead a labourer from Chhattisgarh in Pulwama. On the same day, militants fired on two small-time fruit traders from Punjab in Shopian, killing one and critically injuring another.

On October 24, suspected militants fired at truckers in Trenz village of south Kashmir killing two and injuring one.

The grenade attack, meanwhile, was the second such incident in Kashmir since Saturday evening. Health officials said six of the 19 injured had to be moved to Srinagar for specialised treatment.

https://indianexpress.com/article/i...s-shot-dead-by-militants-one-injured-6093384/
 
Looks like it is Al Faran (ver 2.0) all over again :)
 
It always happened before any world body visit Kashmir. Same pattern when Bill Clinton visit India and Indian agency killed Sikhs.

"The first visit by a United States president to India in 22 years began in a mood of horror and fury yesterday, with India and Pakistan accusing each other of masterminding a massacre of 40 unarmed Sikhs in a village in Kashmir.

Whoever carried out the attack, its timing on the eve of Bill Clinton's five-day tour of India - with all the western media coverage such a visit generates - is unlikely to have been coincidental. President Clinton described the attack as a "horrible development".

The unidentified gunmen, who descended on the village of Chati Singhpura Mattan, 40 miles south of Kashmir's summer capital, Srinagar, ordered the men out of their houses before shooting them at point-blank range. The attack on Monday night was the first on Kashmir's Sikh minority since violence broke out in the state 10 years ago.

India yesterday accused two militant Islamic groups based in Pakistan, the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Hizbul Mojahedin, of carrying out the killings.

Pakistan rejected the claim and said India was exploiting the tragedy for political purposes. "We condemn the killing," said Pakistan's foreign minister, Abdul Sattar.

After talks with Mr Clinton, the Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, emerged to condemn the attack as a "primitive act of barbarism". It was part of a pattern of "ethnic cleansing" that had "been under way for a decade", aimed at driving non-Muslims out of Kashmir, he said.

"We and the international community reject the notion that jihad [holy war] can be a part of any civilised country's foreign policy. We have the means and will to eliminate this menace," he added.

The massacre eclipsed, at least initially, attempts by the US to raise its concerns with India about nuclear proliferation in the region. These are likely to dominate Mr Clinton's meeting in Islamabad on Sat urday with General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler. Mr Clinton sounded his most understanding note yet towards New Delhi's develpping nuclear capabilities, but he refused to lift US sanctions imposed after the country's 1998 nuclear test.

Mr Vajpayee promised that India would not conduct further nuclear tests or "engage in a nuclear arms race". But he defended India's right to maintain "a mininum nuclear deterrent". New Delhi has so far refused to sign the comprehensive test ban treaty on nuclear weapons, despite pressure from Washington.

In a significant tilt away from Pakistan, a US ally in the cold-war era, Mr Clinton said that talks between India and Pakistan could begin only when violence ended. There must be respect for the line of control, the unmarked mountain border between the Indian and Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir. And "some way must be found to renew the dialogue", he said.

India accuses Pakistan of sending armed militants across the line of control into Kashmir. Islamabad denies thisbut admits to offering the "freedom fighters" moral support.

Officials said yesterday that between 10 and 12 uniformed men arrived in Chati Singhpura Mattan after dark, announced that they were conducting a "crackdown" and separated the men from the women. The Sikh men were then sprayed with bullets in two areas, 200 yards apart.

"They shot them dead, point blank," said the director general of police, F A K Bhan. Soldiers yesterday searched the hills and forest near by while in Jammu - the state's winter capital - a curfew was imposed as some 15,000 furious Sikhs blocked roads.

In the past, the militants have carried out random killings of Hindus, but the Sikhs - many of whom run trucking companies in the valley - had been considered neutral in the campaign to divorce Kashmir from India. Hindu villages are guarded by security patrols, but not the Sikh villages, which until now seemed to need no protection.

Yesterday a senior Indian official, Brajesh Mishra, said that New Delhi had evidence that militants linked to Pakistan were responsible, though he refused to identify his sources.

He named Lashkar-e-Toiba, led by Abu Mahaz, as the perpetrator, in a combined operation with Hizbul Mojahedin. But militant leaders in Pakistan rejected the charge.

"The brutal mass murder" on the eve of the Clinton visit was a "pre-planned act of Indian intelligence to defame the Kashmiri freedom struggle", said Syed Salahuddin, head of Hizbul Mojahedin. "The mojahedin have nothing against the Sikh community, which sympathises with our struggle. We assure them that there never was and there will never be any danger to Sikhs from Kashmiri freedom fighters."

President Clinton, who admitted that the US had "neglected" its relationship with India during the last two decades, laid a wreath yesterday with his daughter Chelsea at a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, before official talks and a state banquet last night. He moves on to visit the Taj Mahal today, and a tiger reserve in Rajasthan tomorrow."
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