12-yr-old hostage, 6 militants killed

Majid Jahangir & Suhail A Shah
Tribune News Service
Srinagar/Anantnag, March 22

A 12-year-old boy allegedly held hostage by ultras and six militants, including two Pakistanis, were killed in three separate gunfights in Kashmir today.

With the killing of six militants, the security forces have eliminated eight militants in the past 24 hours.

The police said a cordon-and-search operation was launched in north Kashmir’s Hajin area, around 30 km from Srinagar, yesterday.

“As the searches were going on, the hiding terrorists fired from a house. There were at least eight persons inside the house when the first contact was established,” Bandipore SSP Rahul Malik said.

The operation, he said, was put on hold and at least six civilians were rescued in the first two hours. “Once we rescued them, we came to know that two more persons, including 12-year-old Aatif Mir, had been taken hostage. We tried to rescue them through multiple measures. The family appealed to the militants to release them. Community members were engaged,” SSP Malik said.

“We also involved our team specialising in room intervention and they went to the third floor, but militants fired at them again,” he said.

They were able to rescue the boy’s uncle on Thursday afternoon. “We waited for nine hours. As the firing from that side intensified, we also retaliated and in the process, two Pakistani militants — Ali and Hubaib of Lashkar-e-Toiba —were eliminated,” he added.

Malik said according to those rescued, the boy was kept hostage by Ali. “It is he who killed the boy before our team stormed the building,” the SSP added. He claimed Ali wanted to marry the child’s sister and that was the reason that he kept the boy hostage. 

The boy’s mother Shareefa said, “I repeatedly pleaded for my son’s release, but they did not allow him to leave.”

A video on social media showed an elderly man appealing to the militants to release the duo, saying it was not “jihad”. The police claimed the slain militants were involved in a series of killings in the area. The house was razed to rubble during the gunfight and the charred body of the boy recovered. Two AK-47 rifles were also recovered from the spot.

Meanwhile, two militants were killed in a gunfight with security forces in Shopian this morning. Two militants were also killed in  Sopore.

PSO injured

• Arshid Ahmad, Personal Security Officer (PSO) of Congress leader and Anantnag Municipal Council Chairman Hilal Shah, was injured in a militant attack in Anantnag
• “The MCA Chairman was inside the town hall and his security personnel were waiting out,” an official said