SRINAGAR: Two migrant workers from UP were wounded Friday in a suspected terrorist strike on a Jal Jeevan Mission project site at Mazhama in central Kashmir’s Budgam district, making this the sixth targeted attack on non-natives in J&K this year and the third after the new govt headed by Omar Abdullah assumed office on Oct 16.
The wounded duo, identified as Sanjay and Usman, were at work near the Mazhama graveyard on the banks of Nallah Sukhnag when the assailants fired at them. “One labourer received a bullet injury in his arm and another in the leg. Both are recovering at SKIMS Medical College and Hospital in Srinagar,” a police officer said.
Security forces cordoned off the area immediately to track down the terrorists, he said.
On Oct 18, the bullet-riddled body of a 30-year-old migrant labourer from Bihar’s Banka district was found in a maize field near Rambiara river in south Kashmir’s Shopian district. The labourer, Ashok Chauhan, had been abducted and killed by terrorists.
Barely a week later, on Oct 24, a 19-year-old barber named Shubam Kumar from UP’s Bijnor suffered a gunshot wound in his right arm in a terrorist attack at Batagund village in south Kashmir’s Pulwama.
Earlier, a tourist cab driver identified as Paramjit Singh from Delhi was critically wounded in Shopian on April 8, while Raju Shah, a 35-year-old migrant worker from Bihar, was shot dead by terrorists in Anantnag on April 17. In Feb, two men from Punjab were shot dead in Srinagar.
Friday’s attack comes days after Pakistani terrorists stormed a tunnel-construction company’s campsite on Srinagar-Leh highway in Ganderbal district, killing seven employees, including two from J&K and five migrants — three from Bihar and one each from Madhya Pradesh and Punjab.