3 dead, 10 hurt in Pak shelling
Tribune News Service and Agencies

JAMMU, Sept 25 — Three civilians were reportedly killed and 10 injured in heavy Pakistani shelling in the Shia-dominated Kargil town today. Normal life in the town, especially in the Kaksar area, which was pounded by Pakistani artillery and motor shells, was paralysed.

Reports received here said that Pakistani troops resorted to heavy shelling of the town since midnight and continued till this afternoon. Several huts, Army barracks and buildings were damaged in the shelling, forcing more than 10,000 persons to flee to safer places.

According to official reports, work in government offices and educational institutions has been paralysed. A large number of Kashmiri employees, posted in Kargil, have reached Srinagar during the past week. Senior government functionaries in Kargil have been working from Army camps and units.

The Kaksar area today wore a deserted look after the residents fled to areas 7 km from the town. Goods and passenger transport services between Srinagar and Kargil were also hit after the drivers refused to ply their vehicles on the Drass-Kargil road, which has remained the main target since June, when Pakistani troops started heavy shelling.

In a separate incident, the police gunned down the chief of Lashkar-e-Toiba, Wasim Akram, and his associate, Abu Talya, in an encounter at Surankot in the Poonch sector yesterday. The police said Wasim Akram was chief of the outfit in northern India and as a Pakistani national, he had procured a fake Indian passport. This had enabled him to camp at Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh. He had been organising arms training programmes for new recruits and his job was to set up hideouts for the militants in other Indian states.

Wasim Akram and two other associates, one of whom was wounded and another killed, were on their way to Pakistan when information about their hideout was received by the security agencies. After an hour-long encounter, Akram and his associate were killed. Large quantities of arms and ammunition were recovered from the slain militants.

The police also recovered the headless bodies of Mohammad Aziz, Mohammad Arif, and Farooq Ahmed from the Mandi area of Poonch district today. The three civilians had been killed by foreign mercenaries.

Police and paramilitary forces have been deployed in the Mandi area and in Rajouri to carry out search operations against the militants. Rajouri town was rocked by a powerful bomb explosion. However, there were no casualties.

SRINAGAR: At least two BSF personnel were killed and another was injured when militants detonated a powerful improvised explosive device near a bank at Pattan in the North Kashmir district of Baramula on Friday morning.

Elsewhere in the bandh-hit valley, two persons were killed and three CRPF personnel, including an inspector, were injured since Thursday evening.

Militants detonated a powerful explosive device when a BSF patrol party was moving in the area. Two BSF personnel were killed on the spot and another was injured. He later was hospitalised.

The area was immediately cordoned off and massive hunt launched to nab the militants responsible for the explosion.

Suspected militants shot dead on Nizam-ud-Din in the border town of Uri in north Kashmir.

A joint party of the CRPF and the Jammu and Kashmir Police Task Force, on a tip-off, cordoned off a village near Chandoora in the central Kashmir district of Badgam on Thursday evening to nab the militants and their sympathisers.

However, when the area was being sealed, militants attacked the joint operation party, causing injuries to three CRPF personnel, including an inspector.

The CRPF and the task force personnel also retaliated and in the shootout, one person was killed.