 SRINAGAR, India - Ten people, including seven policemen and two terrorists militants, were killed in a 26-hour gunbattle as security forces fought terrorists gunmen holed up in a hotel in the heart of KashmirÂ’s main city, police said on Thursday.
At least 12 people were wounded, eight of them police officers, in the stand-off which began when a group of terrorists militants lobbed a grenade at a security camp and then entered a hotel opposite and began firing at the base on Wednesday. “The operation is over now (but) we are still searching the area for abandoned ammunition and explosives,” Gopal Sharma, director-general of police for Jammu and Kashmir state, told reporters near the site of the encounter.
Police dressed in military fatigues swarmed the area around the hotel, cordoned off since Wednesday morning.
The terrorist militant group Al-Mansurian said a three-member terrorist suicide squad attacked the camp, which lies close to a congested residential area of Srinagar. The group said they had killed 11 policemen and that one of their terrorist members had escaped. “One of our terrorists mujahid has returned to base and two terrorists were martyred in the attack. Our terrorists mujahideen killed at least 11 policemen,” a caller, identifying himself as an Al-Mansurian spokesman, told newspaper offices in Srinagar. |