Mehbooba, Jaitley pay tributes to soldiers killed in Pulwama attack

Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti said violence of the last three decades or more has taken a heavy toll on the people of the state in terms of death and destruction.

Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti on Saturday strongly condemned the killing of jawans of the state police and CRPF in a pre-dawn militant attack on a district police complex in south Kashmir’s Pulwama.

Army soldiers take position near the site of gunfight at district police lines in Pulwama on Saturday. (Waseem Andrab/HT Photo)

In a statement, Mehbooba said violence of the last three decades or more has taken a heavy toll on the people of the state in terms of death and destruction, tearing apart of the social fabric, inflicting massive economic, academic and other losses besides the irreparable loss of human lives.

The chief minister paid rich tributes to the slain jawans of the two organisations and conveyed her sympathies to the bereaved families.

Eight security personnel, including four CRPF men, were killed when militants carried out a suicide attack on the district police complex in south Kashmir’s Pulwama, triggering a massive gunfight in which the three terrorists were killed.

The terror strike took place at the crack of dawn when the militants, believed to be foreign mercenaries, entered the police complex in the worst-hit Pulwama district, 25 kms from here.

Among the security personnel killed, four were from the CRPF, one was a constable of Jammu and Kashmir Police and three were Special Police Officers working with the state police.

Defence minister Arun Jaitley paid tributes to the slain soldiers in a tweet.