Tourists flee Gulmarg after blast in govt bus

At 4.30 pm when hundreds of tourists on a day trip were about to leave Gulmarg, an unidentified militant hurled a grenade towards J-K’s State Road Transport Corporation (SRTC) bus while tourists were boarding it. The grenade fell straight inside the bus and exploded. Fortunately, only eight tourists had taken their seats, among them six were hurt by the lethal shrapnel.

Although the impact of the grenade was minimum as compared to a similar attack on a tourist bus at Dalgate on Tuesday (eight tourists were killed there), the deafening bang of the grenade blast emptied Gulmarg within minutes.

‘‘This is the tragic end to a beautiful day,’’ says Dilip Kumar Das of Barrackpur, West Bengal who was in the bus when the grenade exploded. Though he was lucky to escape, the splinters hit his companions from Delhi.

The Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kashmir, S M Sahai said: ‘‘Six tourists were injured in the explosion. All of them are stable.’’

The Gulmarg attack, in fact, came as the last nail in Kashmir’s booming tourism season as the few holiday makers who had braved the serial grenade attacks and decided not to leave too fled in a huff. The president of Kashmir Houseboat Owners’ Association, Azeem Tuman says 90 per cent of houseboats fell vacant after the blasts.

‘‘We are worried. Tourism in Kashmir is over now’’ Tuman told The Indian Express. ‘‘After the grenade attacks on the tourist buses, most of them had left the Valley. Whosoever, had braved those attacks, has left the Valley today.’’