Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Police chief S P Vaid asserted that there was “no security lapse” in the ‘fidayeen’ (suicide) attack on a district police complex in south Kashmir’s Pulwama Saturday, in which eight security personnel were killed.
“You cannot prevent (an attack) if somebody is ready to die,” he told reporters here.
He said the militants had taken shelter in the family quarters of the complex.
“The security forces together evacuated everybody from those blocks and in the process, we have suffered some casualties, but the militants have been eliminated,” he said.
The strike took place at the crack of dawn when the militants, believed to be foreign mercenaries, entered the police complex in the worst-hit Pulwama district, 25 km from here.
Three militants have been killed.
Among the forces personnel killed, four were from the CRPF, one was a constable of Jammu and Kashmir Police and three were Special Police Officers working with the state police.
Asked whether the forces were ready to tackle such challenges in the future, the director general of police (DGP) said, “We are alert and we will take care of that.”
The police chief was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a wreath-laying ceremony for two CRPF men– constable Jaswant Singh, a resident of Haryana, and head constable Dhanawade Ravindra Baban, a resident of Maharashtra.
