Police launched an intense manhunt across the Indian capital yesterday for two suspected Islamic extremists who escaped a dramatic gunbattle in which two militants and a police officer died.
The two militants killed during Friday’s shootout in a Muslim area of New Delhi included one of the leaders of a shadowy group responsible for a series of deadly bomb attacks including blasts in the city a week ago, officials said.
The hour-long gunbattle erupted in Jamia Nagar in the capital’s south when police acting on a tip found at least five armed men holed up in an apartment in a maze of streets.
Police Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma, one of the police force’s top officers, died in the hospital from gunshot wounds, police commissioner Y.S. Dadhwal said, adding one suspected militant arrested at the scene was being interrogated.
One of the dead militants was Indian Mujahideen leader “Atif alias Bashir” who was “linked with the blasts all over the country,” he said.
Detectives arrested a suspected aide of Atif at a New Delhi TV studio late on Friday.
“We had a tip he would visit this studio to make a statement on behalf of the militants and we picked him up from the studio,” a senior anti-terrorism squad official said, declining to reveal the name of the studio.
Police identified the arrested Muslim man as Zeeshan but said he was not one of the two suspected militants who escaped during Friday’s gunbattle.
“He had perhaps left the apartment much earlier in the morning and we’re probing if he was among those who planted the bombs in New Delhi on Sept. 13,” the anti-terrorism official said.
The Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for a series of blasts that ripped through busy shopping areas of New Delhi last Saturday and left 22 dead and around 100 wounded. Five bombs exploded while three were defused.
Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said a massive hunt was underway across the national capital for the missing guerrillas but would not comment further.
Over the past five months, serial bombings claimed by the Indian Mujahideen have hit the cities of Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi, leaving at least 130 dead and many more wounded.
The recent wave of attacks has forced the government to confront the emergence of an indigenous Muslim militancy.
The shoot-out in India’s capital came a day after the government unveiled new security measures to tackle what Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said were “vast gaps” in intelligence gathering.
The plans include recruiting 7,000 more police in New Delhi, installing surveillance cameras in busy areas and creating a research wing in its intelligence agency.
Singh said India had to face up to the growing involvement of home-grown militants in attacks.
In the past, India has focused its limited counter-terrorism and intelligence resources on neighboring Pakistan, which it accuses of orchestrating militant attacks.
Hindu-majority India has 140 million Muslims. While tensions have always existed, India’s Muslims have in the past largely resisted organized militancy.
Indian Muslim leaders, however, have complained their community was being victimized by security forces.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS