SRINAGAR: The authorities have moved thousands of migrant workers in Kashmir to a safer location last night, while hundreds have escaped from the Himalayas valley after a wave of targeted murder, said two security officials on Monday.
The suspected terrorists have killed eleven civilians, including five migrant workers, in Kashmir since the beginning of October despite extensive security of security in the mostly demonstrated military territory.
While the trigger for the latest attack waves is not immediately clear.
“We moved thousands of workers to secure their places and facilitate them back,” said a senior police official told Reuters, refused to be named because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
In other regions, security forces have intensified patrols to prevent militant activities, officials added.
A government spokesman in Srinagar refused to comment on the movement of migrant workers.
The decision to move workers came after an attack on migrant workers from Bihar on Sunday.
The police said that terrorists broke into the rented room in Kashmir’s district and shot them, leaving two dead and one injured.
Kashmir has undergone various attacks of violence for years, but the wave of the latest attack seems to be targeted at non-Kashmir, including migrant workers, and members of the Hindu community and Sikh minority in the Muslim majority valley.
Hundreds of thousands of migrant workers today in Kashmir form the backbone of labor in the region in agriculture and construction.
Some of them say they are now afraid of their lives.
“We have seen a worse time, but it has never been targeted.
This time, we are afraid,” said Salam Mohammed aged 32 years, initially from the northern state of Bihar, who had worked in Kashmir for the past six years.
Greetings, the police picked him up, along with other people, from rented accommodation on Sunday night and moved them to a protected area.
“We can’t sit here,” he said, “we’ll be back.”