Mufti gets reminder, his man bomb target

Peerzada Mohammad Sayeed, a senior State Congress leader and Rural Development minister, was inspecting land allocated for a school building in Larnoo at the time of the attack.

Two militant groups, Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen and Tahreek-e-Jihad-e-Islami, called Srinagar newspaper offices and claimed joint responsibility for the attack.

The head master of the school who died was identified as Ali Mohammad Bhat. Among the injured were Anantnag Deputy Commissioner Shailender Kumar, a superintending engineer, Sayeed’s spokesman and nine policemen.

‘‘I had just completed a meeting and was walking to inspect the land allocated for a new school building in the village. Suddenly I heard a big bang. I thought everything was over and ran to a nearby house where I hid in the bathroom,’’ Sayeed recalled.

‘‘There was a lot of shooting. We had no idea what was going on outside. The firing stopped only after 30 minutes. I was bleeding profusely. There were splinters everywhere on my chest. I am lucky to be alive,’’ he said, unbuttoning his shirt to show a splinter wound on his neck.

This is the first such attack on a minister in the Mufti government. In May, militants made an unsuccesful bid on the life of state finance minister Muzzafar Hussain Beigh when a land mine was used to target his convoy.

The new attack breaks a lull which saw waves of tourists, political leaders and parliamentarians visiting the state. There have been three high profile visits as well — of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and President APJ Abdul Kalam in the last two months.

The Mufti government is already worried that the resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue is taking time: it was one slogan which the Chief Minister hoped would keep out the return of violence in a big way. Mufti had been emphasising that New Delhi initiate confidence building measures, including opening the Line of Control at Uri.