Grenade blast at Jammu bus stand, 26 injured

International Desk: One person has been killed and at least 26 others have been injured in a grenade attack in Jammu, which comes exactly three weeks after the terror attack in Pulwama. All the injured have been hospitalised and five of them are critical, doctors said.

The police said the grenade was under a bus at a bus stand in the heart of the city. Most of the injured, an officer said, are bus drivers and conductors. It is unclear if there were people inside the bus.

A senior police officer, Manish Kumar Sinha, told reporters that the grenade probably rolled under a parked bus before it went off around 11.30 a.m, reported news agency IANS.

Visuals from the spot showed security personnel barricading the area as locals rushed in. "I thought it was a tyre burst. It was a big blast. The locals took the injured to the hospital in an ambulance," an eyewitness told news agency ANI.

This is the third grenade attack by terrorists in the bus stand area of the city since May last year.

"The police is working on all the leads. We are collecting evidence and we will hunt them down," a police officer told reporters.

The attack comes a week after the Indian Air Force carried out air strikes on the biggest terror camp of Jaish-e Mohammad in Pakistan's Balakot. Jaish has taken responsibility for the February 14 attack, surprising security forces who said the group's top order in the state has been wiped out.

With Jaish claims that the suicide bomber in Pulwama was a local terrorist, the security forces have been hunting for other members of the cell.

Source: NDTV


risingbd/Dhaka/Mar 7, 2019/AI