Journalist, Six Others Die in Kashmir Gun Battle

SRINAGAR: Two militants were killed by security forces in the northern Jammu and Kashmir state yesterday after a 10-hour gun battle that left five others, including a soldier, dead, police said. A group of militants entered the house of local politician Hoshiar Singh in Kali Mandi village in Samba sector, about 45km south of the state’s winter capital Jammu, and killed Singh and his wife Sashibala, the police said. The couple’s daughter and Singh’s mother-in-law were injured in the attack.

The villagers alerted security forces stationed nearby, who engaged the militants in a gun battle. Jammu-based photojournalist Ashok Sodhi and one soldier died of gunshots wounds.

The militants took shelter in another house in the village and the exchange of fire continued, the sources said.

Five people, including women and children, were trapped inside the house. In the afternoon, the militants killed one of the women and threw her body out of the house, witnesses said. The other hostages were rescued after which the security forces launched an intensive attack and killed the militants.

“The encounter at Samba has ended. The area is now being combed and sanitised in case the militants, who were heavily armed, planted any booby traps,” senior police official Rajinder Singh said.

A total of 12 people including 10 security forces personnel, were injured. They are being treated at a hospital in Jammu town.
“Sodhi ignored all warnings and stood right in front of the house from where the hail of bullets was coming,” recalled Faheem Tak, a reporter with a local TV channel.

Sodhi went there with fellow photojournalists as the plains witnessed their first militant attack after a gap of six years.
Earlier in the day, when he got to know about the gunfight, Sodhi insisted on going there. “I want to shoot my pictures on my own,” one of his colleagues recalled him as saying.

Senior Jammu police official K Rajendra said the militants may be part of a group of men that crossed into the sector on Thursday night from Pakistan.

India’s Border Security Force claimed it foiled an infiltration bid by Pakistan-based militants on Thursday and a dozen militants had retreated after firing several rounds and hurling grenades.

But some groups of militants may have already positioned themselves in the area with plans to attack pilgrims to the holy Hindu shrine of Amarnath, police sources said. Security forces also recovered a large cache of arms and ammunition in the area on Saturday.

The route to the cave shrine in the high Himalayas passes through the Samba sector. The first group of pilgrims is scheduled to leave on June 18. The pilgrimage to the Amarnath cave is held for a short period of about two months every year in June-July.
There have been militant attacks on the pilgrims in the past. At least 32 pilgrims were killed in a militant attack in 2000.

The incident in Sambha came ahead of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Islamabad scheduled later this month for a review of a four-year-old peace dialogue between the neighbours to negotiate contentious issues including the dispute over Kashmir. – Agencies

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