Ten civilians were injured on Wednesday, two of them critically when a grenade exploded on the road in Bijbehara town of Anantnag district.
A police officer speaking on condition of anonymity said unidentified persons, suspected to be militants lobbed the grenade towards a vehicle of paramilitary forces at Goriwan locality of the town on the Srinagar-Jammu highway.
“The grenade missed the target and exploded on the roadside resulting into injuries to ten civilians,” the officer said.
The wounded included a teenager and three women, he said. They were removed to sub-district hospital Bijbehara from where five grievously wounded persons was shifted to a hospital in Srinagar for specialised treatment.
Two of them, including Hafsa and 14-year-old Fazim Bashir were in a critical condition at SMHS hospital.
Hafsa was put on ventilator support and Bashir sent straight to the operating theatre.
“She (Hafsa) has a grievous vessel injury,” a surgeon at SMHS said.
“We can’t say anything about her condition (for) now.”
A senior doctor said the teenage boy’s condition was also “critical”.
“His spleen is badly damaged and needs to be removed. His liver has also suffered damage making his condition serious,” the doctor said.
The condition of three other injured persons, all males, aged between 35 and 40 years was stable, according to doctors.
The medical superintendent of SMHS Hospital, Dr Saleem Tak confirmed five people injured at Bijbehara were being treated at the hospital.
Soon after the grenade exploded, government forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation to nab the assailants.
A police officer blamed militants for the attack, but no militant claimed responsibility for the explosion.
This was apparently the first attack on government forces after New Delhi declared a unilateral ceasefire for the fasting month of Ramadhan, barring an incident in Pulwama earlier wherea grenade thrown at a police station did not explode.
5 Maharashtra legislators escape unhurt
Five Maharashtra legislators, who were on a study tour to Jammu & Kashmir, escaped unhurt in the grenade attack, an official said.
He identified the legislators as Vikram Kale and Dipak Chavan (both Nationalist Congress Party), Tukaram Kate and Kishore Patil (Shiv Sena) and Sudhir Parwe (Bharatiya Janata Party), who were on a study trip to understand the functioning of the Panchayat Raj systems in Jammu & Kashmir.
Suddenly, there were sounds of a tyre burst and the vehicle sped ahead without stopping, one of the badly shaken legislators told media persons later.
After driving for several kilometres, the convoy of vehicles stopped and two tyres of the legislators’ vehicle were found to be shattered with holes, presumably from the gunfire.
However, a security person in the group explained that it was actually a grenade attack but since everybody was sitting inside their vehicles, they escaped unhurt.
After returning to Srinagar, the legislators informed authorities of the attack after which their security was further tightened. (With Inputs from IANS)