Fayaz Bukhari
SRINAGAR, June 1: There is a major shutdown of telecom towers in Kashmir today after militant posters appeared at several places in Valley and militants made a bid to blow up a cell phone tower in Srinagar’s old city area injuring one person.
The mobile services in Kashmir are down with large number of towers across Kashmir valley switched off by the landlords following militant threats and attacks in which two persons were killed and four others were injured.
Militants this afternoon attempted to blow up a cell phone tower in Srinagar’s Gadoodbagh area of Kral Khud. They hurled a hand grenade at a mobile tower of Airtel/Tata Indicom located at the residence of Ghulam Rasool Ahangar and Abdul Ahad Ahangar at Gadood Bagh, Kral Khud Srinagar.
One Shahoor Ahmad son of Abdul Ahad Ahangar who was some 10 meters away from the tower suffered splinter injures in the grenade blast. He was removed to hospital for treatment.
In the meantime, threat posters of unknown militant group, Lashkar-e-Islam, appeared in Natipora area of Srinagar today. They LeI asked the telecom operators to shutdown their businesses or face the consequences. The threat posters also appeared in Aloosa Kralpora and Bus Stand Kupwara town in district Kupwara. The militants in these posters say that they suffered casualties due the cell phones and asked the operators to shut down.
The tower attack in Srinagar is seventh attack on telecoms in Kashmir valley. Last month militants attacked a BSNL franchise shop in Sopore killing one person and injuring two others. Militants also killed a landlord of a telecom tower Dooru Sopore area of North Kashmir. Militants also shot at a tower owner’s son in Pattan. They also attempted to blow up towers in Sopore and Handwara. However, no damage was done to them.
The attacks and threats led to major shut down of telecom services in South Kashmir’s Anantnag and Kulgam districts. Majority of the cell phone towers are shut down except BSNL which are working at most of the places.
In parts of Srinagar, the cellular services are down in most parts of Srinagar and at other parts network is weak following shutdown of several towers.
The security agencies are clue less about the telecom attacks and they blame Hizbul Mujahideen for it. However, Hizbul Mujahideen has denied their involvement in the attacks and have put the blame on security agencies.
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