RINAGAR: Militants made an attempt to blow up the civil secretariat and assembly complex in the heart of the city recently, while 17 people, including a deputy superintendent of police, were killed and three persons abducted in the Kashmir valley.

An official spokesman said that militants fired a rocket on the assembly complex commonly known as “Shergarh complex” situated on the banks of river helm. A portion of the building, which served as constituent assembly in 1951-52, was damaged as a result of the attack.

A little later, another rocket was fired to blow the heavily guarded civil secretariat from where the senior state government officers function. However, the rocket failed to clear the target, the spokesman said.

He said Baramulli town in north Kashmir was brought under curfew as precautionary measures and 21 suspected subversives were arrested during the past 24 hours in the valley.

Abdul Rashid Khan, a DSP at police headquarters, was killed along with others when militants hurled grenades and opened fire on a fleet to government vehicles in Baramulla town, an official spokesman said, following this, Baramulla was brought under curfew. The fleet of vehicles was returning carrying district officers of Baramulla after performing the last rites of a deputy   superintendent of district armed   police, Shital Singh, who was killed. According to unofficial sources, two more persons a bodyguard of Khan and Abdul Maid Sheikh were also killed in the incident.

The police burst teargas shells and also fired in the air to disperse hundreds of protesting ambulance drivers while doctors and para-medical staff of the SMHS Hospital here threatened to resign en masse in protest against the killing of an ambulance driver, who they alleged, was shot dead by the security forces.

The Employees and Workers Confederation has called for a general strike in all government offices in the Valley to protest against the killing.

The officiating superintendent of SMHS Hospital, Dr-Zafar Mehdi, told reporters that the ambulance driver, Ghulam Nabi, was shot by the security forces at Batwara while he was going to the military hospital to fetch a life-saving injection for a patient.

The ambulance had been thoroughly checked at Son war before it was allowed to enter the cantonment area, he said.

Mehdi asserted that the diver had been killed in cold blood and not in cross-fire, An official spokesman, however, said that the driver was shot by “unknown persons.”

Article extracted from this publication >> July 31, 1992