Srinagar: Two army soldiers were killed on Thursday afternoon in a militant attack carried out in busy HMT area on the outskirts of Srinagar.
Police identified the slain as Sepoy Ratan (163 BN) and Sepoy Deshmukh of Territorial Army (101 BN).
The attack was carried out by militants at about 1:15 pm in the busy Aban Shah Chowk of HMT area where a Quick Reaction Team of the army was deployed for regular duty.
Srinagar based defence spokesperson Colonel Rajesh Kalia confirmed the incident and said that troops exercised maximum restraint for the area remains crowded with civilians.
“The militants fired indiscriminately leaving two of our men critically injured,” Kalia said, adding that the injured were rushed to a nearby health facility, “where they were declared brought dead.”
He said that a manhunt had been launched in the area to try and nab the attackers.
Eyewitnesses in the area said that an intense gunfire reverberated in the area followed by panic and everyone rushed to safer places. “Soon after the shootout a cache of armed forces swarmed the area and searches were carried out in the area to try and nab the attackers,” a local source told Kashmir Reader.
Meanwhile, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Kashmir Vijay Kumar has said that the militants who attacked the army soldiers were travelling in a car.
“The facts are being ascertained but it is being said that the militants might be two foreign nationals and a local. They were travelling in a car and opened indiscriminate fire on security forces,” Kumar told reporters.
The attack today has come on the 12th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks of 2008.
Pertinently, the peripheral by-pass road in Srinagar has witnessed several attacks over the last few months, two of them in Nowgam, leaving two policemen dead.

Suhail A Shah