Car bomb blast near Valley school kills 14

The blast comes a day after Hizbul chief Syed Salahuddin said in Pakistan that there was going to be no let-up in militancy in the Valley. But in a faxed statement from Muzaffarabad this evening, the Hizbul condemned the incident.

Just a month ago, suspected militants had tossed a grenade near a city missionary school here killing two children.

Soiled with mud and blood, Raziya’s answerbook lay scatterred among scores of white sheets in the school compound where just an hour ago they had sat on coir mats rolled out on the floor.

A few plastic chairs, for the invigilators, had been tossed hundreds of metres away. Metal shards, smashed glasspanes, charred wood, and bricks were scattered all around. Two limbs of a dog and metal shrapnel from the car, believed to be have been fitted with the 45-kg IED were strewn in the compound and the busy market, the row of shops next to the school.

So strong was the blast that eyewitnesses recalled hearing it from a considerable distance. A huge crater on the Pulwama-Shopian highway, two smashed Marutis, a truck reduced to nearly half its size, littered the road almost half a kilometre away.

‘‘I was walking outside the school when I heard a loud bang. At first, I took it for a sonic boom. I thought it came from a plane or a helicopter in the sky,’’ said eyewitness Mansoor Ahmad, a government employee. ‘‘Moments later, I saw smoke rising above, I rushed towards the school. Within minutes, several of us got busy removing people from the road, the school and the shops. In one minute, everything had changed/’’ At the hospital, crying relatives and friends poured in from across the Valley to check on their dear ones.

The fact that it was exam time in the school helped. Said Ejaz Ahmad, a Class VIII student: ‘‘Our seniors were taking their exams in the compound and we were on the right side of the building. Had students been in the rooms on the left side, more than 100 would have got killed.’’

Ahmad and many witnesses said that at first there was confusion that the bomb was ‘‘air-dropped’’ by security forces but later when police told the mob that it was a car bomb, people became furious. Raising anti-India slogans, they pelted stones at the police which retaliated by firing in the air and tear-gas.

‘‘It was a mere coincidence that there was a sonic boom at the time of the bomb blast. Moreoever some people in the crowd wanted to exploit the situation and malign the forces,’’ said Javeed Maqdoomi, Kashmir’s Inspector General of Police. He blamed the militants for the act. ‘‘Planting car bombs in a crowded place like markets and schools is a new pattern of attack by militants. They did it in Karan Nagar (city) recently and have done it again by parking the car near a school,’’ he said.

Sheikh Owais, DIG, Anantnag Range, said the militants had plans to blow up the Pulwama SSP and the District Commissioner’s office which are barely metres away from the spot.

‘‘A truck coming in the opposite direction scuttled their plan and the car blew up before reaching its intended target,’’ he said. Another police officer said militants wanted to blow up the security force camp adjacent to the school.