The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Monday, December 24, 2001, Chandigarh, India

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Sikh leaders warn Kashmir ultras
Tribune News Service

Jammu, December 23
A large number of people staged a demonstration here today in protest against the killing of five women belonging to minority community in south Kashmir by militants on Friday.

Shouting anti-Pakistan slogans the demonstrators blocked the Jammu-Pathankot highway for about three hours. The demonstrators held a procession and smashed a number of buses on the highway. They set ablaze truck tyres to raised road blocks. Even the movement of troops was affected.

Senior leaders intervened and advised the demonstrators to maintain cool and lift the road block. The protesters obliged before the police arrived on the spot.

Enraged by the carnage, in which five women were killed and several wounded in militant firing in Poshkreeri and Hogam villages in Anantnag district.

A spokesperson for the Khalsa Badla Force said, in a statement, today that the way militants had resorted to the killing of innocent women was highly condemnable.

The spokesperson warned the militants of “dire consequences” if they continued to eliminate members of the minority community in Kashmir.

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The CPM leader, Mr M.Y. Tarigami expressed shock over the incident and advised militants not to indulge in un Islamic acts by attacking innocent women.

Several leaders of a particular community said that attempts were being made to force them to leave the valley. They said it was the fourth gruesome attack on their community.

The Panun Kashmir Chairman, Dr Ajay Chrungoo, said the attack on women in south Kashmir villages, after the massacre in village Chitti Singhpora, ultras, was part of the plan of the militants to carry out ethnic cleansing in the Kashmir valley so that the valley remained a safe for the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.