A police sub-inspector who was injured in a militant attack at Pattan is being taken to SKIMS Hospital, Soura in Srinagar. (Press Trust of India)
Three policemen were killed and another critically injured today in Jammu and Kashmir, in three attacks by terrorists in a span of four hours.
The policemen were reportedly ambushed when they were returning from a village in Shopian in the Kashmir valley where they had gone to investigate a land dispute. The police said five terrorists dressed in army fatigues stopped the vehicle and let two civilians go before they opened fire on the policemen, killing them instantly. The policemen were unarmed.
"They were investigating a land dispute between two families. It's an act of cowardice and we will definitely track down the killers," said Javid Gilani, senior police officer.
Hours earlier, terrorists had shot at a police officer inside a bus in Baramulla district.
The police said the terrorists, on spotting the officer, first tried to hijack the bus heading for Pattan. They later abandoned the plan and fired at the officer before escaping when the bus stopped in a traffic jam.
The officer, Ghulam Mustafa, was critically injured and is in hospital.
In the third incident, a civilian was injured in Tral in south Kashmir. The police say he was attacked on suspicion that he was an informer for the security forces.
The spurt in attacks coincide with an alert in Delhi after intelligence warnings of the possibility of a suicide attack along the lines of last month's attempted ambush on an army camp in Samba by the Jaish-e-Mohammed, based in Pakistan.
Two terrorists were killed after a six-hour shootout; they were dressed in army uniforms.
A note found near one of them said, "We salute the martyrs who gave their lives for this attack. Next meeting in Delhi."
A day before that attack, two other members of the Jaish-e-Mohammed had stormed a police station in Jammu's Kathua District, killing three security personnel and two civilians and injuring 11 others. The terrorists were also killed in the shootout.
Intelligence agencies say the attacks suggest that a number of Jaish-e-Mohammed members have crossed the border into India in the last few days.