Pro-Pak group kills J-K Minister

The incident occurred at 9.45 am when the Minister with two escort vehicles left his home, Mandipora, for Srinagar. As the three vehicles reached the Chimran culvert, militants detonated the landmine, killing the minister and five others instantly.

It is learnt that Ghulam Mohammad Wani, NC block president, had arrived atthe minister’s place at about 9 am. From here, the two, with the escort vehicles, headed for Srinagar. As soon as the leading vehicle, belonging to Qazigund police station, passed the culvert, militants triggered off the device which exploded under the minister’s Ambassador. The vehicle was destroyed and the bodies were mangled in the blast which could be heard within a 10-km radius.

Shaken local residents said they thought the blast was a tremor that had struck their villages. Some villagers said the window panes of their houses were broken. Bloodstains dot many places on the Chimran kutcha road where a 25-ft-deep crater has formed.

According to agency reports, at least two BSF personnel were killed at Kandi Kokernag in South Kashmir when their vehicle was blasted by suspected Hizbul militants an hour after the blast that killed the minister and others in the same district. And in another blast, at least seven police personnel were injured when militants blasted their jeep at Nowgam Banihal on the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway.

According to the DPA news agency, the Hizbul Mujahedin claimed responsibility. “It is meant to be a warning to Kashmiri Muslim leaders who side with India,” Kaleem Siddiqui, a Hizbul spokesman told DPA in Islamabad. Siddiqui said Bhat was on “our hit list of such persons.”

Elsewhere in the state, 14 militants and two counter-insurgents were among 17 people killed during the past 24 hours.

Born in 1953, Bhat graduated in arts and law. He become a block vice-president of the National Conference in 1978 and served as the ruling party’s Shahabad block president since 1989. He was elected from Dooru Assembly constituency on the NC ticket in 1996. Bhat was appointed Parliamentary Secretary in August 1998 before being inducted in the council of ministers.

Meanwhile, a report from Jammu said that six militants, including a Pakistani infiltrator, were killed in separate militancy-related incidents across the border district of Rajouri since last evening. Army jawans busted a militant hideout in Udhampur district and recovered a cache of arms, ammunition and explosives including 60 kg of explosives and one five-foot-long rocket.