Fidayeen attack outside Srinagar, gunfight on

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Sempora, October 10

Kashmir’s nursery of entrepreneurs became the site of a major battle today as some fidayeen terrorists barricaded themselves inside the seven-storey building of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI), sparking a lengthy firefight on the peripheries of Srinagar city.

Security forces fired a barrage of rockets and carried out multiple blasts to neutralise the terrorists, who are suspected to have sneaked in pre-dawn and turned it into an impregnable bunker. The attack took place at Sempora, 1 km outside Srinagar district.

DGP K Rajendra Kumar said “two to three terrorists” were suspected to be inside the building. “Going by our assessment and the intercepts, it could be Lashkar-e-Toiba,” he said.

The security forces had suffered no casualty and the damage to terrorists could only be confirmed after the operation ends, he added.

The terrorists are suspected to have taken position on the sixth and seventh floors of the building, which previously housed the institute’s hostel and was now serving as its office headquarters. The building was engulfed in a cloud of smoke as security forces attempted to blast it in the afternoon. The building, however, remained intact and only a part of it caught fire.

The institute, established  by the state government in 1997, has trained and financed hundreds of entrepreneurs over the past decade.

It is for the second time this year that the EDI complex has become the site of a gunbattle. In February, terrorists ambushed a convoy of the CRPF on the highway outside the EDI complex and positioned themselves inside one of its buildings for three days.

Two CRPF personnel, three Army commandos, including two Captains, a civilian and three terrorists, were killed in the three-day gunfight then.

Monday’s was  a rare fidayeen attack in which the terrorists first sneaked into the building from its rear on the Jhelum bank, laid rudimentary fortifications using chairs and tables, and then drew attention by setting the attic ablaze, said the police.

As fire tenders were rushed in, these were fired at, forcing them to withdraw and setting the scene for a lengthy battle, which continued through the day. A police official said Army commandos were involved in the operation to neutralise the terrorists, who were firing after long pauses to avoid “giving away their location”.