Militants attack Cong leader's house in Kashmir

Militants attacked the residence of Congress district president Imtiyaz Paray in Hajin area of north Kashmir's Bandipora district on Sunday.

Sources said that militants lobbed a grenade and fired around 10 rounds towards Imtiyaz's house.

Central Reserve Police Force personnel guarding the house fired in retaliation. However, there was no report of loss of life in the exchanges.

A police official said that the militants in fact lobbed two grenades towards the house of Parray at around 2 am on the intervening night. "There are also some bullet marks on the back side of the house. We are ascertaining the facts," he said.

Imtiyaz is the son of the notorious Ikhwan (counter-insurgent) commander Kuka Parray, who contested two Assembly elections on Congress ticket in 2008 and 2014.

Imtiyaz, who is the district president of the Congress for Bandipora, polled more than 12,000 votes in 2014.

Hajin recently made headlines when security forces gunned down six Lashkar-e-Toiba militants, including the nephew of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

Earlier, on October 11, two Air Force commandos and  two LeT militants were killed while four security personnel were injured in an encounter in the same area.

Hajin, 32km from Srinagar, was once known as the epicentre of the pro-government militia, Ikhwan, who broke the back of the militancy in 1990's.

From the mid 90s to the later part of last decade, Hajin was out of bounds for militants as it was the home town of the most dreaded renegade Kuka Parray, a star anti-militancy commander.

However, over the last two or three years, the area has emerged as a hub of LeT as most of the Pakistani militants find the area suitable for carrying out the attacks.

The vast swathes of orchards, huge clusters of villages, close proximity to Srinagar on south and Bandipora on the north makes Hajin an important transit point for militants as it is also connected to highway.