Two non-local vendors were shot dead by militants on the evening of October 16 in two different places in the Valley.
Sources said unidentified gunmen fired at a non-local labourer near the Eidgah area of Srinagar, leaving him in a pool of blood. The wounded cart vendor was rushed to the nearest SMHS hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead. He has been identified as Arvind Kumar, 45, of Bihar. In another incident, a non-local labourer identified as Sagir Ahmad from UP has been shot dead in Pulwama.
Security forces have launched a search operation to arrest the attackers.
“Strongly condemn the killing of street vendor Arvind Kumar in a terror attack in Srinagar today. This is yet another case of a civilian being targeted. All Arvind Kumar did was come to Srinagar in search of livelihood and it’s reprehensible that he was murdered,” former chief minister Omar Abdullah said.
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The vendor has been killed on a day when the police said that 13 terrorists have been killed in Kashmir in nine encounters over the last nine days. The police claimed that four militants responsible for four civilian killings in Kashmir in the first week of October have been killed in these encounters.
On October 5, militants shot dead prominent Kashmiri Pandit businessman Makan Lal Bindroo at his shop. Within an hour of Bindroo’s killing, another non-local Hindu paanipuri seller from Bihar was shot dead in the Lal Bazar area of the city, followed by the killing of a Muslim taxi driver, Mohammad Shafi Lone, in northern Kashmir’s Bandipora district.
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A day later, militants shot dead 50-year-old Sikh woman principal Supinder Kaur and a local Kashmiri Pandit teacher, Deepak Chand, at a Srinagar school.
The police said this year 28 civilians have been killed. Seven of them were from minority communities and the rest were Muslims.
In the last 24 hours, security forces have killed three militants in Srinagar.
