Nine killed in blast at police station in Indian-administered Kashmir
Indian security forces arrive near the site of an explosion in a police station in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir, on Saturday [Aljazeera]
Source:Island
At least nine people have been killed and 29 injured after a cache of confiscated explosives detonated in a police station in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city.
The stockpile exploded late on Friday night at a police station in the Nowgam area, south of Srinagar.
One unnamed source told the Reuters news agency that identification efforts are under way as some bodies “have been completely burned”.
“The intensity of the blast was such that some body parts were recovered from nearby houses, around 100-200 metres [110-220 yards] away from the police station,” the source said.
Most of those killed were policemen and forensic team officials who were examining the explosives at the time of the detonation, unnamed sources told Indian broadcaster NDTV. Two officials from the Srinagar administration also died in the blast.
With five people still in critical condition, the death toll could continue to climb, according to the media outlet.
“Not a terror attack. Police say it’s a very unfortunate incident,” NDTV’s senior executive editor Aditya Raj Kaul said in a post on social media.
“The blast happened when a forensics team and the police were checking the explosive material stored at the police station,” he said.
The huge blast comes days after Monday’s deadly car explosion in New Delhi, which killed at least 12 people near the city’s historic Red Fort and which officials have called a “terror” incident.
The explosion in the Indian capital occurred just hours after police arrested several people and seized explosive materials as well as assault rifles.
Police said the suspects were linked to Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), a Pakistan-based group that is seeking to end Indian rule in Kashmir, and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, a Kashmir offshoot linked to JeM.
Police in Indian-administered Kashmir also detained more than 650 people as part of their investigation following the New Delhi car blast.
[Aljazeera]