Pak-based Lashkar front claims J&K attack that killed doctor, 6 others: Sources

The Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ganderbal district, which killed a doctor and six migrant workers on Sunday, sources told India Today TV.
TRF chief Sheikh Sajjad Gul, a resident of Srinagar, is the mastermind of the attack and the group’s local module, at his behest, carried out the attack targeting Kashmiris and non-Kashmiris together for the first time, sources said.
In 2022, the NIA announced a Rs 10 lakh reward each for information leading to the arrest of Gul and three others – Saifullah Sajid and Saleem Rahmani, who are residents of Pakistan, and Basit Ahmed, a resident of Kulgam in Jammu and Kashmir, for terrorism in the Union Territory.
TRF has been active in Kashmir and has targeted Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs and non-locals in the last one-and-a-half years, marking a big change in the strategy of the outfit, which earlier killed several Kashmiri Pandits, sources said.
The terror group had carried out a recee of the attack site – a construction site in the Sonamarg area of Ganderbal district – for the last one month, sources said, adding that two to three terrorists were said to carry out the targeted killings.
Top sources said the TRF wanted to gain attention by doing target killings after the September-October Assembly polls concluded. This is the biggest target killing since 2019.
A four-member team from the counter-terror unit, National Investigation Agency (NIA) will visit the attack site on Monday afternoon, according to Union Home Ministry sources. The NIA may be handed over the investigation into Sunday’s attack, they added.
According to initial reports, the doctor, identified as Dr Shahnawaz and the migrant workers attacked were part of the construction team working on the Z-Morh tunnel, which connects Gaganeer to Sonamarg in Ganderbal.

Dr Shahnawaz who died in the Ganderbal terror attack.

The terrorists carried out the attack when the labourers and other staff working on the tunnel project at Gund in Ganderbal had returned to their camp late in the evening, officials told news agency PTI. Five others were injured in the attack.
Congress MP Rahul Gandhi on Monday condemned the “cowardly” attack and expressed his condolences to the bereaved families and wished a speedy recovery to the injured.
“The killing of many people, including a doctor and migrant labourers in the terror attack in Ganderbal, Jammu and Kashmir, is a very cowardly and unforgivable crime. I express my deepest condolences to all the bereaved families and hope for the speedy recovery of the injured,” he tweeted in Hindi.
“This audacity of terrorists will never be able to break the faith of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The whole country is united in this fight against terrorism,” he said.
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah strongly condemned the attack on “unarmed innocent people”, which came just four days after he was sworn in.
The attack in Ganderbal came after terrorists killed a migrant worker from Bihar in Shopian district on October 18. A similar attack took place in April this year when a migrant labourer, also from Bihar, was shot dead by terrorists in a targeted attack in Anantnag district.