Gunmen holed up in shopping centre after grenade attack
Gunmen tried to enter the official residence of Kashmir's Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammed Saeed, yesterday morning, killing two security personnel and injuring passers-by, in an audacious attack that will further poison already toxic Indo-Pakistan relations,
After lobbing grenades at the heavily guarded house in Srinagar, the assailants were forced to run for cover when security forces returned fire. They fled into a small shopping complex across the road, where about 100 people were trapped as several men exchanged gunfire with security forces.
Police and troops evacuated some of the civilians and seized control of the ground floor of the complex but had still not caught the militants. Two previously unknown groups claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Deputy Home Minister, L.K. Advani, said an outfit called al-Mansurian, an offshoot of the banned, Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, was to blame.
'With this attack, it is clear that the policies of our neighbour have not changed,' said Mr Advani, referring to India's claim that Pakistan sends terrorists into Kashmir to wage war in India's only Muslim-majority state. The issue of cross-border terrorism is the biggest stumbling block to better relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
Earlier this month, the two countries lashed out at each other over Kashmir during a United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York, souring ties which had previously been improving.
Asked what he thought the impact of the latest attack would be, the leader of the opposition National Conference in Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, said: 'After New York, it's hard to see how things could possibly get any worse, barring another mobilisation of our armies on the border.'
