Jammu-Kashmir Minister Farooq Abdrabi’s house attacked in Valley

Suspected militants on Sunday attacked the ancestral residence of Jammu and Kashmir Minister Farooq Abdrabi at Dooru in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district, said police. A policeman was injured in the incident and has been hospitalised. Farooq is Minister of State for Hajj and Waqf. In a separate incident, two militants were gunned down on Sunday afternoon in a brief encounter with police in south Kashmir.

According to police, the militants were killed in retaliation after they fired on a team of police officers at Padgampora on Awantipora-Pulwama Road. “Two terrorists were killed and one of them escaped,” DGP S P Vaid told The Indian Express. He said the militants fired at the cavalcade of the SP and the Additional SP of Pulwama while they were on their way to Awantipora and were killed in retaliatory fire.

Local residents, however, claimed that police had set up a checkpoint near Padgampora and a brief gunfight took place when the militants passed it in a car. Although police have not yet identified the killed militants, sources said they have been identified as Rayees Ahmad and Farooq Hurrah from the Hizbul Mujahideen.

Ahmad, a resident of Rajpora in Pulwama, was active in the area since June 2016. According to officials, he was involved in an attack on a security picket outside a minority camp at Tumlahall in Pulwama district and in the snatching of two self-loading rifles with magazines. Hurrah, a resident of Shopian, had surrendered in 2010 and was out on parole, said officials, adding that two weapons, a grenade and ammunition were recovered from the spot.

(With PTI inputs)