Three personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were injured on Wednesday afternoon when two motorcycle-borne gunmen opened fire on a security checkpoint at Akhran near Mir Bazar in south Kashmir's Kulgam district, officials said. The attack took place at around 2.15 pm, and the assailants fled the spot immediately after the firing.

Source: IANS

The injured men belong to the CRPF's 46 Battalion, which had set up the naka at Akhran. They were identified as Head Constable Somveer Singh, who was hit in the left arm, Constable Rakesh Dass, who took a bullet in the leg, and Constable Santosh Chandru, who suffered injuries to the abdomen and spine. All three were shifted to Government Medical College (GMC) Hospital in Anantnag.

Source: PTI

Doctors at Anantnag said Chandru, who hails from West Bengal, was taken into the operation theatre and his condition was described as critical, while Dass, from Assam, and Singh, from Madhya Pradesh, were stable. CCTV footage of the attack that surfaced later in the day captured the sound of rapid firing; reports put the burst at around 30 rounds in a matter of seconds.

CRPF personnel at the checkpoint retaliated, officials said, and joint security forces cordoned off the Akhran–Nowpora area and launched a search operation to trace the attackers. No terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the attack till Wednesday evening, and officials said the identity of the gunmen was being probed.

Source: ANI

Hit-and-run pattern in south Kashmir

The Kulgam attack follows the pattern of brief, hit-and-run firings on security checkpoints in south Kashmir, where attackers strike a static deployment and escape within seconds, making the cordon-and-search response the main tool for tracking them down. Wednesday's firing came in a district that has seen repeated targeting of security personnel and patrol parties, and the hunt for the two gunmen was continuing at the time of reporting.