Two non-locals were killed and one was injured in an attack by gunmen at Wanpoh in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district on Sunday evening. Police and security forces have cordoned off the area, the Kashmir Police Zone said in a tweet.
The deceased have been identified as Raja Reshi Dev and Joginder Reshi Dev. Chunchun Reshi Deva, the injured civilian, has been admitted to an Anantnag hospital where his condition is stated to be stable.
Police have launched a manhunt to trace the attackers. On Saturday, two non-locals—Sajeer Ahmed, a carpenter from Uttar Pradesh, and Arvind Kumar, a golgappa seller from Bihar—were shot dead at Litter in Pulwama and Eidgah in Srinagar respectively.
The Valley has been witnessing a spate of attacks on non-local civilians. On October 5, Virender Paswan, a golgappa seller, was shot dead at Lal Bazar hours after M.L. Bindroo, a Kashmiri Pandit and owner of a famous pharmacy in Srinagar, was gunned down at his shop at Haft Chinar near Iqbal Park by militants of The Resistance Front (TRF)
These attacks were followed by the killing of a young man, Muhmmad Shafi, at Naidkhai in Bandipur.
Two days later, the TRF shot dead Supinder Kour, the principal of a government higher secondary school at Sangam, Eidgah in Srinagar, and her colleague, Deepak Chand. Kour was a Sikh while Chand was Hindu from Jammu who was appointed in the education department four years back under the prime minister's employment package for Kashmiri migrants living outside Kashmir.
The killings have spread panic among the Kashmiri Pandit and Sikh communities in the Union Territory and also among the non-locals who come to Kashmir for work from different states in summers.
In the wake of civilian killings, the government has intensified anti-militancy operations in Kashmir and gunned down 13 militants. According to IGP Vijay Kumar, two of the slain militants were members of the TRF which the police say is Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in disguise.
This year, 32 civilians have been killed in militant attacks in Kashmir, most of them local workers of the BJP.