Desperate the day after, militants kill 5 BSF men

A BSF officer at Tral said the ultras had fitted the device in a wall and detonated it when the BSF men were examining the suspicious looking object. Later a local news agency, quoting a member of the Hizbul Mujahideen, said the outfit has claimed the responsibility of the Tral attack and that at Awantipore yesterday, in which seven BSF men were killed.

The bodies were brought to the Tral camp, to emotional scenes. A few troopers broke down when the caskets were being placed on a truck for the BSF headquarters at Panthachowk, where their last rites would be performed.

And as troops and police continued their searches for three militants behind the yesterday’s massacre in Kathua, a powerful explosion in a passenger bus this morning near Jammu, 70 km away, left two Vaishno Devi pilgrims dead and 21 injured this morning.

The ill-fated bus, JK02B 3527, left the general bus stand at Jammu for Katra around 6.10 am. Most of the passengers in the bus were Vaishno Devi pilgrims. As it reached Manda 15 minutes later, a powerful explosive device already planted inside the vehicle went off, tearing open the roof and ripping apart its two sides. The bus immediately caught fire.

Morning walkers were the first to reach the spot and they took the injured to the hospital. Fire brigade men from the nearby Fire Station also reached the spot. The bus had burnt by then.

The sound of the explosion alerted Army jawans who took position behind the main gate of the nearby unit. ‘‘But we soon realised that it was only a blast and not a fidayeen attack,’’ said an Army jawan.

The impact of the blast was so powerful that the bus axle and some other heavy iron rods were seen bent at right angles. Some bus parts that were blown up in the air fell in the Army enclosure.

In Srinagar, the BSF arrested a top militant of the Al-Umar Commando Force during a raid in the city on Tuesday. The BSF said Shabir Ahmad Zargar was a close confidant of Al-Umar chief Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar alias Latrum.