SRINAGAR, AUGUST 10: In what seemed to be a carefully planned operation, militants hurled a grenade from an alley outside the State Bank of India on the busy Residency road at 12.15 pm. And within seven minutes, as police and journalists rushed to the spot, they set off an improvised explosive device (IED) fitted with a timer killing 10 and injuring 27 others. The dead included eight policemen, a shopkeeper and The Hindustan Times photographer Pradeep Bhatia. A local resident also died of shock.The scene of the blast was horrific: bodies lay in pools of blood. A policeman, who had tried to hide behind a car, was hit by debris so sharply that his head had been severed. Five motorcycles and a few cars parked nearby were ripped apart. Even the concrete wall of the bank caved in and across the road, the entire equipment of a computer shop was scattered all over.Director General of Police Gurbachan Jagat said that the militants had laida trap by hurling a grenade and then detonating the improvised explosivedevice after the police and press reached the spot. He said the IED hadbeen fitted in an Ambassidor car parked in the lane which was detonatedthrough a timer device.``I was clicking pictures when I saw the car flying up in the air. It was a like a ball of fire and debris were comming down all around,'' said Tribune photographer Amin War. ``I sat flat on the road and for a moment, it was like an earthquake, I felt everything go dark around me. I could not see or hear anything. But when I opened by eyes I saw blood-soaked bodies all around.''A policeman, who had survived the blast unhurt, said the police and security personnel opened indiscriminate fire in panic after the explosion. ``Everybody felt they were under militant attack,'' he said as he was putting bodies into the truck for evacuation. A photographer of the Associated Press, Rafique Maqbool, said that as the bomb went off, he too lay down on the road. ``There were glass pieces of window panes of the cars comming straight on my body,'' he said. The dead included Sub Divisional Police Officer (SDPO), Kothibagh Kuldeep Sharma and constables Ravinder Kumar, Naseer Ahmad, Bodh Raj, Nisar Ahmad, Jan Mohammad and Imtiyaz Ahmad. Superintendent of Police, East Srinagar and Station House Officer, Kothibagh were also injured in the incident.Hizbul spokesman Saleem Hashmi in Islamabad, claiming responsibility for the blast, told a newsagency that ``with the ceasefire we have shown the Indians that we can be peace-loving but with this we have shown them that we can also be strong fighters.''Though a caller claiming to be a Lashkar had claimed responsibility for the blast here, the Lashkar spokesman in Lahore, Yahya Mujahid, strongly denied any involvement of the group in the blast. However, DGP Jagat insisted that Lashkar was behind this gruesome blast. ``The Hizbul was claiming responsibility under pressure from Pakistan otherwise it is handiwork of Lashkar,'' he said.
