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Militants mow down 5 persons

Five abducted villagers, including a bus conductor, were killed by militants late on Friday afternoon hours after their abduction from a bus near village Patimhala Dachan in Doda district.

Jammu range police chief R V Raju told rediff.com on phone from Jammu that four militants came to the bus stand in the remote village of Patimhala, 25 kilometres from Kishtwar, and abducted three persons who were sitting in a bus.

Those abducted included bus driver Raj Kumar, conductor Prakash and an employee of the state food supplies department identified as Romesh Kumar.

The militants took them towards the nearby jungle. On the way, they stopped four labourers and took them along. Later, the militants opened fired indiscriminately killing five of them, including the conductor of the bus. The driver and passenger, however, managed to escape and immediately informed the locals in Patimhalla.

Police and army teams immediately rushed to the nearby forests and laid a cordon. After a search of the area, they recovered bodies of the five civilians - identified by the police as Bhushan Lal, Sudesh Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Romesh Kumar and conductor Prakash.

As news about the killings reached the village high tension gripped the area. Police said the bodies were being brought to Kishtwar. Sources said senior police officers have already rushed to the spot. Police sources said that security forces in the entire Jammu region are on high alert following the killings and a massive hunt is on to trace the killers.

No group has owned responsibility for the killings. However, Raju blamed militants of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba for the killings.

Following the killings, the government has decided to post armed police guards in each bus in the remote areas of Doda district, according to sources.

On Wednesday, gunmen wearing army uniforms had shot dead five truckers on the Jammu-Srinagar highway. The state government has ordered a magisterial enquiry into the killings. Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah said the enquiry 'will determine how the militants managed to surface on the highway, commit the crime and disappeared into the woods'.

Dr Abdullah said vigil on the highway would be enhanced and movement of vehicles regulated. Henceforth, he said, no vehicle would be allowed to ply on the highway from 1800 hours onwards without road clearance from the road opening parties.

Two truck terminals - one each at Qazigund and Ramban - are being set up for movement of trucks in convoys on the highway.

In another development, in Srinagar, unidentified persons attacked the party headquarters of the Democratic Freedom Party, headed by Shabir Shah, at Rajbagh. However, there were no casualties. Shah is away in New Delhi. A DFP spokesman blamed pro-government militants for the attack.

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