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Pakistani Group TRF Says they attacked Reasi

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Reasi terror attack: The survivors of the bus attack said they played dead in order to make the terrorists stop firing at the vehicle.

Pakistani Group TRF Says they attacked Reasi

The security forces in Jammu and Kashmir have launched a massive manhunt for three Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who attacked a bus full of Hindu pilgrims in the union territory’s Reasi district on Sunday. Nine people, including a two-year-old toddler, died in the attack.

The bus was returning to Katra, Vaishno Devi, from Shiv Khouri, another pilgrimage spot, when at least three foreign terrorists opened fire on the vehicle. After the driver was hit, the bus veered off the road and fell into a deep gorge. The terrorists even fired on the mangled bus to inflict maximum damage, said eyewitnesses.

The survivors of the bus attack said they played dead in order to make the terrorists stop firing at the vehicle.

Santosh Kumar Verma, a native of UP’s Balrampur district, said when he first saw a terrorist blocking the vehicle’s way, he thought he would not survive. He told The Indian Express that he saw the driver’s head falling on the steering wheel. The bus then fell into the gorge.

Another eyewitness said they laid pinned on the ground without making any movement. “We pretended to be dead until the militants left,” he added.

Rajat Ram Verma said he lost his 14-year-old son in the attack.

Suddenly someone shouted that gunmen attacked the bus. I immediately put my wife and son under the seat, but before we could take the blanket, the bus fell into a ravine and I lost my son,” he told the newspaper.

11 teams of police, army and CRPF are working together on two different axes to neutralize the terrorists, a senior police official told PTI.

The authorities did not rule out that a fourth person who was guarding the terrorists would also be present at the scene.

The bus was carrying pilgrims from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi.

The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow group of the banned terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, initially claimed responsibility for the attack, but later retracted its claim.

Two-year-old Titu Sawhney and his mother Pooja, a bus driver and conductor, are among the dead. Five of the nine dead had gunshot wounds. Of the 41 injured, 10 have gunshot wounds.

The operation is carried out in difficult terrain. The forces have been deployed to contain the terrorists despite dense forests, scarcity of water resources, threat of forest fires, steep slopes and crevasses that act as natural shelters, a senior officer said.

Jammu and Kashmir Governor Manoj Sinha said the attack was a despicable attempt to incite unrest in Jammu.

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