Militants gun down 22 in J&K villages

An act of desperation, says PM; US too condemns attack

In a pre-dawn strike, militants today killed 22 villagers in Doda district, 300 km from Jammu.

According to reports from the area, heavily armed militants in Army combat uniforms asked residents of Panjdobi and Thava villages to gather outside the house of the village heads and shot them from a point-blank range. The victims belonged to the minority community and included a nine-year-old girl.

Out of nine injured, eight have been air lifted in Army choppers to a Jammu hospital. The attack comes a day before the separatist leadership of the moderate Hurriyat Conference is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh in New Delhi.

This is the first major strike against the minority community in the last three years and comes a day after militants killed four out of nine members of the minority community who had been abducted from a village in neighbouring Udhampur district. Senior police officials have rushed to these areas.

Police suspect Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba to be behind the attack. The biggest Kashmiri militant organisation Hizbul Mujahideen, condemning the attack, said it was carried out by Indian security agencies to defame the militants. "The attack has been carried out by those who were behind the Chattisinghpura massacre and is aimed at maligning the militant struggle" a Hizbul statement said.

The attack comes days after Chief Minister Gulam Nabi Azad won his first-ever election from Doda by a record margin. Azad, who had termed his win and good turnout in the byelection an endorsement of the ongoing peace process said, "This attack will not affect the peace process".

Former chief and patron of the Peoples' Democratic Party Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said the attack was aimed at disturbing the ongoing peace process.

Deputy Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Muzaffar Baig said the attack was targeted at the Indo-Pak peace process. "By singling out Hindus for such a major massacre, they are sending a message to the Indian nation that this exercise (peace process) being undertaken by the government is futile," he said, adding it was also aimed at spoiling the atmosphere for the second roundtable conference with the separatists, convened by the prime minister on May 25.

The last major attack against minorities in the state was in 2003 when militants had gunned down 24 Kashmiri Hindus in Nadimarg village near Shopian in Pulwama district.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has condemned the killing of 22 people in two villages of Doda district even as the Centre today asked the Jammu and Kashmir government to take a fresh look at security measures for the minorities and said it would not be cowed down by such acts aimed at derailing the peace process.

"People of Kashmir have rejected and rebuffed terrorists repeatedly," the prime minister said. "We have advised a review of security measures for the minorities," Home Secretary VK Duggal said after a high-level meeting chaired by Home Minister Shivraj Patil called to review security in the state.

The United States has described the killings as a "heinous act of terrorism". "We strongly condemn this heinous act of terrorism and hope the Indian authorities will be able to apprehend the perpetrators quickly," an official of the Bush administration said.

The BJP has slammed the incident as "ethnic cleansing" and asked the Centre to tell Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism.

"This incident clearly shows the desperation of the terrorists who want to derail the peace process," Duggal said,