January 20, 2003	Monday	Ziqa'ad 16, 1423

SRINAGAR, Jan 19: Twenty-one people were injured on Sunday when a grenade hurled by suspected freedom fighters went off among civilians in occupied Kashmir, police said.

Nine others, including six Mujahideen, were killed in violence around the region, police said.

The freedom fighters had targetted a bus carrying police traveling through Kulgam, a township 70 kilometers south of Srinagar, but the grenade missed its mark and hit a bus carrying civilians, said a police official.

Of the 21 injured, four were in serious condition and transferred to a Srinagar hospital, he said.

Meanwhile, suspected Mujahideen on Sunday shot dead a police officer and his son in the village of Gundqaiser near Bandipora township, 60 kilometers north of Srinagar, a police spokesman said.

He said three veiled Kashmiris barged into the house of assistant sub-inspector Mushtaq Ahmed at around 3:30 am and opened fire.

“The officer and his son died on the spot, while the officer’s nephew was injured in the shoot-out,” the spokesman said.

The security force sealed off the area and searched house to house to find the culprits.

Later on Sunday, Indian troops killed three people who tried to cross from Azad Kashmir at Bimber Gali in the southern district of Rajouri, said defence spokesman Lieutenant Colonel B.S. Rathore.—AFP