23-hour Lal Chowk siege ends, two LeT guerrillas killed

SRINAGAR - A 23-hour gunbattle that turned Lal Chowk, the heart of Jammu and Kashmir summer capital Srinagar, into a war zone ended Thursday noon with two guerrillas of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) being killed, police said.

“The operation is over. Two LeT militants have been killed,” Jammu and Kashmir’s police chief Kuldeep Khoda told reporters near the shootout site in Lal Chowk - the main business hub in Srinagar.

“We had inputs that the LeT was planning an attack in Srinagar. There is a desperation on part of Pakistan-based elements. They wanted to target not only Srinagar but any part of India and Srinagar is their prime target,” Khoda said.

Heavy firing at break of dawn broke the brief lull and security forces resumed their operation against the guerrillas who had been holed up inside the Punjab hotel since 1.30 p.m. Wednesday. A civilian and a policemen were killed and 10 people, including two paramilitary troopers, were wounded in the initial attack.

The hotel building caught fire in the exchange of bullets but police blamed the militants for setting the building ablaze before they were killed.

Flames billowed out from the roof of the building at the end of the fidayeen attack that came amid official claims of steep fall in violence.

Security forces were engaged in a mopping up operation to find if the militants had left behind any unexploded grenades or RDX.

Srinagar, the urban hub of a 20-year-old separatist campaign, remained tense as panic gripped the area following the violence.

Life in the city had come to a near standstill with the nerve centre of the city cut off since Wednesday afternoon when two heavily armed militants attacked a paramilitary picket.

The guerrillas hurled grenades and opened indiscriminate firing when the market was bustling with hundreds of shoppers and routine commuters.

Police rescued nearly 100 civilians in the area Wednesday and more were evacuated from the nearby building Thursday morning before launching a final assault to flush out the suicide attackers.

This was the first suicide attack in two years. The last such strike in the city was in October 2007 in which two militants were killed and three soldiers wounded.

Pro-Pakistan Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen had claimed responsibility for the attack Wednesday. But it appears that the militants were part of a joint squad of the guerrilla outfits which have been conducting coordinated strikes in Jammu and Kashmir during the past years.