Blast in Srinagar market — 17 dead, 40 hurt

This vegetable market, Penchi mandi was abuzz with activity since early this morning. On Monday, the security forces would come to make purchases for the whole week so there was extra rush today as well. At 10.10 am , an IED planted by the militants beneath a heap of boulders in the middle of the market exploded. Seven died on the spot while over 40 others including five Special Security Bureau (SSB) personnel were injured. However, the toll rose to 17 when 10 more persons including two SSB personnel succumbed to their injuries later in the hospital.

“We were busy selling vegetables. There is always good business on Mondays when the security forces personnel make purchases in bulk. It was a deafening blast,” said Abdul Rasheed, a vendor, who was fortunate enough to escape with a minor splinter injury in his leg. “I jumped out of the shop. It was like kayamat (doomsday). Blood and bodies were all around me and those who had survived were madly running,” he said. “It was then I felt pain in my leg. A splinter had hit me too. I did not move till the policemen came”.

An elderly woman was running from one body to another. She was mother of a vegetable vendor, Mohammad Ayub. She was stopping all familiar faces and was enquiring about her son. Nobody, however, had an answer as Ayub was already dead. Two brothers, one a vegetable vendor and another selling chicken, both died in the blast. “All the dead were poor vendors, who would buy vegetables and chickens from the main mandi in city outskirts and sell here to make few hundred bucks a day especially on Mondays,” said a vendor Abdul Salam, who survived the blast unhurt.

Ali Mohammad, who was injured in the blast and was lying in SMHS hospital told The Indian Express that he was talking to his neighbour Irshad at the time of the blast. “Irshad, a resident of Jammu, who was running a knife-sharpening machine was telling me about his plans to go home on Eid. That was the last time I saw him alive. A splinter hit him in the head, killing him on the spot,” he said.

Inspector General of Police, Kashmir range, A K Bhan claimed that the pan-Islamic outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba was responsible for the blast. However, no militant organisation accepted responsibility for the attack. Senior Superintendent of Police, Srinagar, C Srinivas told The Indian Express that the blast was so intense that its sound could be heard in the entire city. “Fortunately the brunt of the impact of this blast was taken by the Border Security Force vehicle parked there. Otherwise the death toll would have been much more,” he said.

Immediately after the blast, the police cordoned off the entire area apprehending another blast. “The militants generally trigger another blast to inflict heavy casualties on the forces. So we first rushed our bomb disposal squad,” Srinivas said.

Though a few survivors alleged that the forces’ personnel in the mandi opened indiscriminate fire, Srinivas denied it. “In fact most of the forces’ personnel had already completed the shopping and were coming out of the market at the time of the blast. This prevented more casualties among security force personnel present there,” Srinivas said.

The injured were admitted in SMHS hospital and most of them were subsequently shifted to Bones and Joints Hospital, Barzulla and Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura.

Dr Umar Sharief Kirmani, who attended the injured in SMHS hospital, said that all of them had multiple splinter injuries. “I did not find a single bullet injury. They were all hit by the splinters,” he said.