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Militants kill 15 in J&K

Fifteen Muslim villagers including seven children were gunned down at village Silohi in the Rajouri district of Jammu region Friday night, according to a top police officer.

On condition of anonymity, the officer said a group of heavily armed gunmen forced their entry in to a house at village Silohi and opened indiscriminate fire from automatic weapons on the inmates some of whom were sleeping.

All the 15 inmates of three families were killed on the spot. The deputy commissioner of Rajouri K A Khan told this correspondent on phone that those killed included seven children, five male and three female members.

The Jammu range police chief R V Raju told rediff.com that the gunmen later torched the house before fleeing. He said till late Saturday evening ten badly-charred bodies were recovered from the debris.

Raju said that the male members were working as village defence committee members in the village.

As the message reached Rajouri Saturday morning the district SP along with other police officers rushed to the spot. They police party had to trek for ten hours through thick jungles to reach the village, according to Raju. The district SP returned to Rajouri Saturday evening.

He has ordered massive searches in the area to nab the killers. No one has yet owned responsibility for the killing. "It is a remote village on the edge of the district," said Khan, who held a meeting Saturday evening to review the situation.

In Jammu also authorities discussed the killings at series of high-level meetings.

Meanwhile militants hurled a powerful hand-grenade on a police party in the main market at Awantipora in southern Pulwama district on Saturday morning seriously injuring nine persons including six policemen, one member of the paramilitary CRPF and three civilians. All the injured persons were rushed to Srinagar for treatment.

A report from Pulwama Saturday evening said militants shot and killed a special police officer identified as Gausia Bano.

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