Anantnag: A non-local labourer was shot at and injured by unidentified gunmen Friday morning in the Pulwama district of South Kashmir, police said.
The injured non-local has been identified as Muneer-ul-Islam, son of Abdul Karim, a reisdent of West Bengal’s Dinajpur. “He had three bullet wounds, one on the right side of the chest and the other two in his left leg,” a health official from Pulwama told Kashmir Reader.
He said that Islam, however, was stable and was shifted for specialized treatment to Srinagar after he was given basic aid at Pulwama district hospital.
The incident, according to police, took place in the Ugergund area of Newa in the Pulwama district. “The labourer was going to work at about 9:30 this morning when militants intercepted him and shot at him multiple times,” a senior police official in Pulwama district told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the injured was immediately shifted to the hospital, where his condition was stable. “A cordon and search operation was immediately launched in the area to try and nab the attackers, but they had managed to flee,” the official said, adding that a case has been registered and an investigation has been taken up in the matter.
A series of attacks on non-locals, Kashmiri Pandits, on-leave policemen, and politically affiliated locals have kept Kashmir valley on tenterhooks throughout the most part of the year now, in continuation to an uptick in such attacks post abrogation of article 370 in August 2019.
As per reports by the central government 118 civilians have been killed in targeted killings since August 5, 2019. 49 of these killings have been reported in 2021 and more than 20 this year, thus far.
Today’s attack, however, has come after a brief lull. The last such attack was carried out on August 16, here in the Shopian district of South Kashmir. A Kashmir Pandit was killed and another one was injured in that attack.
Meanwhile, the forces have also intensified anti-militancy operations across Kashmir. More than 130 militants have been killed in the year so far, around 32 of them Pakistani nationals.
“Rest of the slain militants are locals,” a police source told Kashmir Reader. The authorities however have not been handing over bodies of slain militants to their families, and have been burying them at undisclosed locations for more than two years now.

Suhail A Shah