Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
China will not set an economic growth goal for this year as it deals with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
It is the first time Beijing has not had a gross domestic product (GDP) target since 1990 when records began.
The announcement was made by Premier Li Keqiang at the start of the country’s annual parliament meeting.
The world’s second largest economy shrank by 6.8% in the first quarter from a year ago as lockdowns paralysed businesses.
“This is because our country will face some factors that are difficult to predict in its development due to the great uncertainty regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and the world economic and trade environment,” Premier Li said.
The country’s leadership has promised to boost economic support measures amid growing concerns that rising unemployment could threaten social stability.
The move comes as tensions between Beijing and Washington are becoming increasingly strained over the coronavirus pandemic, trade and Hong Kong.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump stepped up his attacks on China, suggesting that the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, is behind a “disinformation and propaganda attack on the United States and Europe.”
It came as Mr Trump and other Republicans have escalated their criticism of Beijing’s handling of the early stages of the outbreak.
Also on Thursday, China announced plans to impose new national security legislation on Hong Kong after last year’s pro-democracy protests.
The announcement was met with a warning from Mr Trump that the US would react “very strongly” against any attempt to gain more control over the former British colony.
Separately, two US senators have proposed legislation to punish Chinese entities involved in enforcing the planned new laws and penalise banks that do business with them.
Earlier this week, the US Senate unanimously passed a proposal to delist Chinese companies from American stock exchanges if they fail to comply with US financial reporting standards.
US-listed Chinese companies have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks after Luckin Coffee revealed that an internal investigation found hundreds of millions of dollars of its sales last year were “fabricated”.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Hundreds of foreign companies are actively procuring components for India and Pakistan’s nuclear programmes, taking advantage of gaps in the global regulation of the industry, according to a report by a U.S.-based research group.
Using open-source data, the nonprofit Centre For Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS) report provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of networks supplying the rivals, in a region regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear flashpoints.
“India and Pakistan are taking advantage of gaps in global non-proliferation regimes and export controls to get what they need,” said Jack Margolin, a C4ADS analyst and co-author of the report.
It is seldom possible to determine whether individual transactions are illegal by using publicly available data, Margolin said, and the report does not suggest that companies mentioned broke national or international laws or regulations.
But past reports by the think tank, whose financial backers include the Carnegie Corporation and the Wyss Foundation, have often led to action by law enforcement agencies.
Spokesmen from the offices of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan did not respond to requests for comment. Pakistan’s military, which plays a major role in decision-making for the nuclear weapons programme, also declined to comment.
To identify companies involved, C4ADS analysed more than 125 million records of public trade and tender data and documents, and then checked them against already-identified entities listed by export control authorities in the United States and Japan.
Pakistan, which is subject to strict international export controls on its programme, has 113 suspected foreign suppliers listed by the United States and Japan. But the C4ADS report found an additional 46, many in shipment hubs like Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
“In Pakistan’s case, they have a lot more stringent controls, and they get around these by using transnational networks… and exploiting opaque jurisdictions,” Margolin said.
The father of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, AQ Khan, admitted in 2004 to selling nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya. He was pardoned a day later by Pakistani authorities, which have refused requests from international investigators to question him.
India has a waiver that allows it to buy nuclear technology from international markets. The Indian government allows inspections of some nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency, but not all of them.
Neither India or Pakistan have signed the international Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, adhered to by most nuclear powers. Consequently, they are not obliged to submit to IAEA oversight over all of their facilities.
C4ADS identified 222 companies that did business with the nuclear facilities in India that had no IAEA oversight. Of these, 86 companies did business with more than one such nuclear facility in India.
“It’s evidence that more needs to be done, and that there needs to be a more sophisticated approach taken to India,” Margolin said. “Just because the product is not explicitly bound for a military facility, that doesn’t mean that the due diligence process ends there.”
India and Pakistan have gone to war three times – twice over the disputed Kashmir region – since they won independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Having for years secretly developed nuclear weapons capability, the two declared themselves nuclear powers following tit-for-tat atomic tests in 1998.
A few years later, in 2002, the two foes almost went to war for a fourth time, following an attack by Pakistan-based militants on the parliament in New Delhi. And a year ago, a suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group in a part of Kashmir controlled by India sparked another flare up in tensions.
Both countries are estimated to have around 150 useable nuclear warheads apiece, according to the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit group tracking stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Official news agency Xinhua says the three died in Saturday’s attack in the province of Ituri
Central African country is major source of cobalt and copper but armed rebels pose a persistent risk
Mines have been targeted by armed rebels in the past. Photo: Reuters
A gun attack in a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed three Chinese nationals, the official news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.
The attack took place on Saturday in the northeastern province of Ituri, which borders Uganda and South Sudan, Xinhua said, citing the Chinese embassy.
It did not name the mine in question or the company operating it.
The DRC is the world’s biggest producer of mined cobalt – a key ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles – and one of Africa’s biggest copper producers, although its key copper-cobalt producing region is in the southwest, far from the site of the attack.
The country has attracted billions of dollars in investment from Chinese miners in recent years despite security risks.
Congo sends in troops to guard Chinese-owned copper mine amid fears of human rights abuses
20 Jun 2019
Canadian gold miner Banro, which owns mines in Maniema, a DRC province south of Ituri, suspended operations last year after several of its mines were overrun by armed rebels.
The Chinese embassy has asked the Congolese government to “take effective measures to protect the lives and property of Chinese citizens” in the DRC, as well as to expedite an investigation into the killings, Xinhua said, noting that the embassy had repeatedly advised Chinese citizens against travel to Ituri due to the presence of armed groups.
The embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, a public holiday in China.
Comic crusader Priya, a gang-rape survivor who earlier campaigned against rape and acid attack, is back in a new avatar. This time she is fighting the trafficking of girls and women for sex.
The “modern-day female superhero” was first launched in December 2014, exactly two years after the horrific gang rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi, to focus attention on the problems of gender and sexual violence in India.
In the latest edition – Priya and the Lost Girls – she takes on the powerful sex-trafficker Rahu, the evil demon who runs an underworld brothel city where he has entrapped many women, including Priya’s sister Lakshmi.
Indian-American actor and writer Dipti Mehta, who wrote the script of the comic, draws on ancient Indian mythology to create larger-than-life fantastical characters and delivers a powerful feminist statement.
The story of Lost Girls begins when the protagonist returns home to find that there are no girls in her village.
She then mounts her flying tiger Sahas (Hindi for courage) and arrives in Rahu’s den. It’s a city ruled by greed, jealousy and lust, where women exist only to serve and please men – and those who resist are turned into stone.
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTI
Priya is threatened and attacked, a woman who works for Rahu tries to lure her into the sex trade saying: “If you work for us, you’d serve only five to six men and not 20”, but in the end, good wins over evil and she manages to vanquish Rahu and liberate her sister and all the other trafficked girls.
But victory still eludes her. The families of rescued girls refuse to take them back. The survivors are treated like “lepers”, facing stigma, scorn and ridicule.
But Priya and the other girls stand up to confront patriarchy, says Ms Mehta, “just as women have broken their silence to talk about MeToo”, the campaign against sexual harassment and abuse that started in Hollywood in October 2107 and later spread to many other parts of the world.
“I was very clear from the start that Lost Girls can’t be just another comic book where good guy wins and evil dies, it had to be much more than that,” Ms Mehta says.
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTI
Ram Devineni, the Indian-American creator of the comic series, told the BBC that he had decided to focus on sex trafficking in this edition after visiting Sonagachi, India’s largest red-light area in the eastern city of Kolkata, where he met several women engaged in sex work.
“Half of them told me they had been tricked into coming there and, once there, they were forced into the sex trade. The other half said they’d agreed to do this for a living because they were dirt poor and they had no alternative.
“Often there were two to three women sharing a small dingy room, many of them had young children who lived with them, and some of them said their children slept in the same bed where they serviced clients.
Mr Devineni says that from his conversations with them, he realised that many of the women there could leave, but chose not to.
“Most believed in the idea of sacrifice, for the sake of their families, their children. The shackles that hold them back are mostly emotional and psychological coercion.”
Some of their stories, he says, have found their way into the Lost Girls, which will be launched digitally on Monday to coincide with the start of United Nation’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence.
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTIAccording to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, human trafficking is the second largest organised criminal business in the world after the arms trade. It is even ahead of the drugs trade.
“It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry,” anti-trafficking activist Ruchira Gupta told the BBC on the phone from New York.
Ms Gupta, who supports trafficked girls and women in India through her charity Apne Aap Women Worldwide, says there are 100 million people trapped in human trafficking globally, of which 27 million are in India alone, and most of the trafficking is in girls and young women.
India, Bangladesh and Nepal, she says, make up “the epicentre” of global sex trafficking.
Ms Gupta, who collaborated on Priya and the Lost Girls, says she plans to take the comic to schools and colleges in India and the US to use it as a talking tool, “as a conversation starter on what is a very difficult topic”.
The only way to fight trafficking, she believes, is to “de-normalise” sex trade – and cinema, art and pop culture are tools that can help do that.
The comic is made to appeal to young people. After its launch, it can be downloaded for free anywhere in the world; it also has “augmented reality features”, which means people can see special animation and movies by scanning the artwork with their smartphones.
Image copyright PRIYASHAKTI
“People often make flippant comments to say that prostitution is the oldest occupation in the world, but they don’t realise that trafficking is not some poor woman getting money in exchange for having sex with a man. It is the extreme exploitation of most vulnerable girls,” Ms Gupta says.
To stop this “commodification” of girls, she adds, we need to create revulsion in men’s minds about sex trade – and it’s best to catch them young.
“We must work with young boys and teenagers, 13 to 14 year olds, through storytelling and pop culture. They learn about sex from porn sites which portray sex workers as happy hookers, and no-one sees the girl behind her.
“I want to demolish that myth of the happy hooker. I want to ensure that people see the girl behind her.”
Artwork by Syd Fini and Neda Kazemifar
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Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is in the news in India after a judge asked an activist to explain why he had a book “about war in another country”.
Vernon Gonsalves had appeared in the high court in Mumbai city on Wednesday for a hearing on his bail plea.
The judge’s question sparked a flurry of tweets, with users both outraged and bemused by it.
Five activists, including Mr Gonsalves, were arrested in August 2018 in connection with caste-based violence.
Police raided and searched their homes at the time and submitted a list of books, documents and other belongings to the court. The public prosecutor told the court that police had found “incriminating evidence” in Mr Gonsalves’ home, including “books and CDs with objectionable titles”.
“Why were you having these books and CDs at your home? You will have to explain this to the court,” the judge told Mr Gonsalves.
Police said that all five activists incited Dalits (formerly untouchables) at a large public rally on 31 December 2017, leading to violent clashes that left one person dead. They accused them of “radicalising youth” and taking part in “unlawful activities” which led to violence and showed “intolerance to the present political system”.
The arrests had been criticised by many at the time who saw them as an attack on free speech, and even a “witch hunt” against those who challenged the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
So the judge’s question quickly made news and War and Peace was soon trending on Twitter.
The tweets ranged from jokes to shock over the state of India’s judiciary.
Others wondered how they would fare in a courtroom given what’s on their bookshelf, and some have issued a call out asking people to share books from their own “subversive” collection.
Mudasir Ahmed Khan alias ‘Mohd Bhai’, the mastermind of the 14 February Pulwama terror attack, was killed in an encounter earlier today in South Kashmir.
Mudasir was a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist and the one who arranged the vehicle and the explosives for Adil Ahmed Dar, the suicide bomber who attacked a CRPF convoy killing 44 troopers.
He was among three terrorists killed in Tral in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district by security forces an overnight encounter, which began after the terrorists opened fire during a cordon and search operation in Pinglish area.
Police said that among the three terrorists neutralised at Pinglish in Tral, two were locals and one was Pakistani national.
Bodies of all three terrorists are charred beyond recognition and police have sought assistance of their family members for DNA test to establish their identity.
Mobile phone record indicates that Mudasir was in constant touch with Adil after providing the van to him.
Mudasir was a 23-year-old resident of Mir Mohalla of Tral in Pulwama. The son of a labourer, Mudasir was an electrician with a graduate degree.
He joined the JeM sometime in 2017 as an overground worker and was later drawn into the terror outfit by Noor Mohammed Tantrey, alias ‘Noor Trali’, who is believed to have helped the terror group’s revival in the Kashmir Valley.
Mudasir disappeared from his home on 14 January 2018 following the killing of Tantray in December 2017. The same month, his role came under lens in the Lethpora attack on a CRPF camp that left five personnel dead.
Officials believe that Mudasir was also involved in the terror strike at the army camp in Sunjawan in February 2018, in which six personnel and a civilian were killed.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the 14 February terror attack, had carried out searches at Mudasir’s residence on 27 February.
Authorities are also looking for another JeM operative, identified as Sajjad Bhat, a resident of Bijbehara in south Kashmir, who was one who bought the vehicle used in the attack on the CRPF convoy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday condemned in strong words the attack on a group of Kashmiri merchants in Lucknow by a group of right-wing men, assuring that those behind the attack will be dealt with sternly by the Uttar Pradesh government.
SNS Web | New Delhi | March 8, 2019 4:48 p
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday condemned in strong words the attack on a group of Kashmiri merchants in Lucknow by a group of right-wing men, assuring that those behind the attack will be dealt with sternly by the Uttar Pradesh government.
Addressing a rally in Kanpur, located 80 kilometres from Lucknow, the PM said, “Desh mein ekta ka vatavaran banaye rakhna bahut ahem hai. Lucknow mein kuch sirphire logo ne hamare Kashmiri bhaiyon ke sath jo harkatein ki thi uss par UP sarkar ne turanth karwayi ki (There is an environment of unity across the country. (But) Some crazy people in Lucknow attacked our Kashmiri brothers. The UP government has taken prompt action on them),” he said.
“I will also urge other state governments to take strict action whenever wherever they try to do such an act,” PM Modi added.
On 6 March, two Kashmiri street vendors were attacked by a group of men from a fringe right-wing group on a busy road in the Uttar Pradesh capital.
In a video shot by one of the accused, the men clad in saffron shirts were seen with sticks in their hands and thrashing the vendors. The men were heard saying that they were assaulting the vendors because they were from Kashmir. The vendors were rescued after several locals intervened.
As the video of the incident went viral on social media, the BJP and the state government came in for severe criticism from across the political spectrum.
The police arrested a man identified as Bajrang Sonkar. An FIR has been registered against unidentified men.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, too, condemned the incident and requested chief ministers of all the states to protect and love Kashmiri students.
“I want to convey a message to the entire country. I heard of a few incidents against Kashmiri children. Kashmiris are, were and will remain our people,” Rajnath Singh said.
Earlier on February 20, two Kashmiri shawl vendors claimed they were beaten up and called “stone pelters” by unidentified men on a train, forcing them to cut short their business trip to Rohtak.
The incidents come amid reports of some Kashmiri people claiming they were being targeted in many parts of the country in the aftermath of the February 14 terror attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama that left over 44 personnel dead.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionProtests have been held in Indian-administered Kashmir over attacks on Kashmiris in other parts of India
India’s top court has ordered the government to protect Kashmiri people from attacks in apparent retaliation for last week’s deadly bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir.
There have been several reports of Kashmiri students and businessmen being harassed or beaten up in recent days.
The Supreme Court has also sought a response from the states where these alleged incidents happened.
The attack has sparked anger and anti-Pakistan protests across India.
The suicide bombing of an Indian security convoy in Pulwama on 14 February was claimed by a Pakistan-based militant group and has led to a war of words between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
But in some cases the anger has been directed against Kashmiri people living in other parts of India. The attack, which killed more than 40 Indian paramilitary police, was the deadliest against Indian forces in Kashmir in decades.
Hundreds of Kashmiri students, traders and businessmen have returned to Kashmir from various Indian cities out of fear that they could face harassment or attack.
India has long had a volatile relationship with Muslim-majority Kashmir, where there has been an armed insurgency against Indian rule since the late 1980s.
The region has been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan since independence. Both countries claim all of Kashmir but control only parts of it. They have fought two wars and a limited conflict over the territory.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionKashmiri students living in Dehradun and other cities have returned home since the attack
What did the court say?
The court’s decision singled out the federal government as well as governments in 10 states which are home to a sizeable Kashmiri population.
It asked authorities to widely publicise the details of officials who Kashmiris can contact if they face threats or violence.
The order was in response to a petition seeking protection for Kashmiris living across India. Tehseen Poonawala, one of the petitioners, told the BBC that he was moved to act because he was “disturbed” after reading reports of Kashmiris being attacked.
“It’s not about Kashmiris. It’s about human beings. We cannot be a country that responds with mob violence,” he said.
What happened to Kashmiri students?
In the days following the attack, isolated incidents of students from Kashmir being beaten up or evicted from their accommodation in northern Indian states were reported in local media. Kashmiri Muslims were warned to stay vigilant and India’s Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) offered help to those in need, but also warned of false reports.
“We did so to provide protection to the [Kashmiri] students,” the college principal, Aslam Siddidqu, told the BBC, adding that he had faced pressure from right-wing groups.
Federal education minister Prakash Javadekar has denied that “incidents” have taken place involving Kashmiri students.
But a police official in Dehradun told the BBC that 22 students had been arrested for protesting and demanding that Kashmiri students be expelled from colleges in the city.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionMarkets and businesses were closed to protest against violence
What’s the bigger picture?
The attack has raised tensions between India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars and a limited conflict in the region and are both nuclear powers.
India has accused Pakistani intelligence services of having a hand in the attack, which was claimed by militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Pakistan denies this and has warned that it will retaliate if India takes military action. In his first comments addressing the attack, Prime Minister Imran Khan said India should “stop blaming Pakistan without any proof or evidence” and urged Indian authorities to share any “actionable intelligence”.
India has moved to impose trade restrictions on Pakistan. It has also said it will build dams to reduce the flow of water to Pakistan from three rivers in India. Similar plans were announced in 2016, after a deadly militant attack on an Indian base in Kashmir.
India has said it will ensure the “complete isolation” of Pakistan after a suicide bomber killed 46 soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Federal Minister Arun Jaitley said India would take “all possible diplomatic steps” to cut Pakistan off from the international community.
India accuses Pakistan of failing to act against the militant group which said it carried out the attack.
This is the deadliest attack to hit the disputed region in decades.
Both India and Pakistan claim all of Muslim-majority Kashmir but only control parts of it.
An insurgency has been ongoing in Indian-administered Kashmir since the late 1980s and there has been an uptick in violence in recent years.
How will India ‘punish’ Pakistan?
India says that Jaish-e-Mohammad, the group behind the attack, has long had sanctuary in Pakistan and accuses its neighbour of failing to crack down on it.
It has called for global sanctions against the group and has said it wants its leader, Masood Azhar, to be listed as a terrorist by the UN security council.
Although India has tried to do this several times in the past, its attempts were repeatedly blocked by China, an ally of Pakistan.
Mr Jaitley set out India’s determination to hold Pakistan to account when speaking to reporters after attending a security meeting early on Friday.
He also confirmed that India would revoke Most Favoured Nation status from Pakistan, a special trading privilege granted in 1996.
Pakistan said it was gravely concerned by the bombing but rejected allegations that it was in any way responsible.
But after Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a speech that those behind the attack would pay a “heavy price”, many analysts expect more action from Delhi.
After a 2016 attack on an Indian army base that killed 19 soldiers, Delhi said it carried out a campaign of “surgical strikes” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, across the de facto border. But a BBC investigation found little evidence militants had been hit.
However analysts say that even if the Indian government wants to go further this time, at the moment its options appear limited due to heavy snow across the region.
How did the attack unfold?
The bomber used a vehicle packed with explosives to ram into a convoy of 78 buses carrying Indian security forces on the heavily guarded Srinagar-Jammu highway about 20km (12 miles) from the capital, Srinagar.
“A car overtook the convoy and rammed into a bus,” a senior police official told BBC Urdu.
It stands as the deadliest militant attack on Indian forces in Kashmir since the insurgency began in 1989.
The bomber is reported to be Adil Dar, a high school dropout who left home in March 2018. He is believed to be between the ages of 19 and 21.
Soon after the attack Jaish-e-Mohammad released a video, which was then aired on the India Today TV channel. In it, a young man identified as Adil Dar spoke about what he described as atrocities against Kashmiri Muslims. He said he joined the banned group in 2018 and was eventually “assigned” the task of carrying out the attack in Pulwama.
He also said that by the time the video was released he would be in jannat (heaven).
Dar is one of many young Kashmiri men who have been radicalised in recent years. On Thursday, main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that the number of Kashmiri men joining militancy had risen from 88 in 2016 to 191 in 2018.
India has been accused of using brutal tactics to put down protests in Kashmir – with thousands of people sustaining eye injuries from pellet guns used by security forces.
What’s the reaction?
“We will give a befitting reply, our neighbour will not be allowed to de-stabilise us,” said Prime Minister Modi.
Mr Gandhi and two former Indian chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir all condemned the attack and expressed their condolences.
The attack has also been widely condemned around the world, including by the US and the UN Secretary General.
The White House called on Pakistan to “end immediately the support and safe haven provided to all terrorist groups operating on its soil”.
Pakistan said it strongly rejected any attempts “to link the attack to Pakistan without investigations”.
What’s the background?
There have been at least 10 suicide attacks since 1989 but this is only the second suicide attack to use a car.
Prior to Thursday’s bombing, the deadliest attack on Indian security forces in Kashmir this century came in 2002, when militants killed at least 31 people at an army base in Kaluchak near Jammu, most of them civilians and relatives of soldiers.
The latest attack also follows a spike in violence in Kashmir that came about after Indian forces killed a popular militant, 22-year-old Burhan Wani, in 2016.
More than 500 people were killed in 2018 – including civilians, security forces and militants – the highest such toll in a decade.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars and a limited conflict since independence from Britain in 1947 – all but one were over Kashmir.
Who are Jaish-e-Mohammad?
Started by cleric Masood Azhar in 2000, the group has been blamed for attacks on Indian soil in the past, including one in 2001 on the parliament in Delhi which took India and Pakistan to the brink of war.
Most recently, the group was blamed for attacking an Indian air force base in 2016 near the border in Punjab state. Seven Indian security personnel and six militants were killed.
It has been designated a “terrorist” organisation by India, the UK, US and UN and has been banned in Pakistan since 2002.
However Masood Azhar remains at large and is reportedly based in the Bahawalpur area in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
India has demanded his extradition from Pakistan but Islamabad has refused, citing a lack of proof.
This is the worst terror attack on security personnel since the Uri incident in September 2016 which left 18 soldiers dead.
SNS Web | New Delhi | February 14, 2019 4:52 pm
At least 13 jawans were killed on the spot and others succumbed in the hospital.
At least 20 security force personnel were killed and over 45 seriously injured in suicide blast when an explosive-laden car rammed into a bus in which they were travelling near Letapora of Pulwama in South Kashmir.
According to news agency ANI, gunshots were heard from the area following the high-intensity blast.
CRPF DG RR Bhatnagar said the convoy carrying the soldiers was travelling from Jammu to Srinagar when the attack occurred. Terrorists continued to fire at the convoy even after the bus was completely charred. The convoy consisted of 70 vehicles carrying about 2500 soldiers. Two CRPF vehicles were damaged in the attack.
The attack has reportedly happened on a heavily guarded highway.
The attack is being taken seriously as the highway particularly in South Kashmir is properly sanitised before movement of convoys of security forces. The Road Opening Parties (ROPs) also conduct thorough checking of the road for possible IEDs.
The DGP of J-K Police, Dilbag Singh, confirmed that it was a suicide attack in which an explosive-laden car was rammed into the CRPF bus.
The bus was completely destroyed and mutilated bodies of the jawans lay scattered on the road that also bore blood stains.
At least 13 jawans were killed on the spot and others succumbed in the hospital.
The injured jawans have been rushed to the 92 Base hospital of the Military and CRPF hospital.
Pakistan backed Jaish-e-Mohammed has claimed responsibility for the Pulwama terror attack, in a text message to Kashmiri News Agency GNS.
A spokesman of JeM claimed that the attack was carried out by their activist Aadil Ahmad of Gundi Bagh in Pulwama.
Former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti condemned the gruesome attack.Former chief minister Omar Abdullah also condemned the attack and extended his condolences to the families of the bereaved.
He further said the Jaish has claimed the blast as a suicide (fidayeen) attack reminiscent of the dark days of militancy pre-2004-05.
Army and CRPF jawans have cordoned off the area and launched search operations in the nearby residential locality.
The convoy was held up in Jammu for the past six days due to the closure of the Jammu-Srinagar highway because of snow and landslides and proceeded to Srinagar this morning only after the highway was opened for one way traffic.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is likely to be assigned the investigation of the attack.
This is the worst terror attack on security personnel since the Uri incident in September 2016.
Eighteen soldiers were killed and several others injured when heavily-armed militants stormed a battalion headquarters of the Indian Army in North Kashmir’s Uri town.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 