J&K: ULF takes responsibility for attack on migrant workers
SRINAGAR: A little-known organisation calling itself the United Liberation Front (ULF) has claimed responsibility for the attack on migrant workers in Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, saying it was carried out as a reprisal while asking them to leave the region.
Raja Reshi and Joginder Reshi from Bihar were shot dead at Wanpoh in Kulgam district while another migrant worker was injured in the latest in a series of targeted attacks in Kashmir that have left 11 people dead this month.
The attack on Sunday was the third on migrant workers in two days. Arvind Kumar Sah of Banka in Bihar was killed in Srinagar, and Sageer Ahmad, a carpenter from Saharanpur, was shot dead in Pulwama on Saturday. Five of the 11 civilians killed this month in Kashmir were migrant workers.
The ULF claimed responsibility for the attack in Wanpoh. In a statement circulated on social media, ULF said the attack was carried out as a reprisal to what it claimed the “lynching of 200 Muslims only in Bihar” in last one year by “Hindutva forces” .
There is no record of 200 lynchings in the past year in Bihar.
“As already warned all non local stooges to leave our land or get ready for what they deserve,” Umar Wani, who claimed to be a spokesman for the ULF, said in the statement. “This was retaliatory strikes against the atrocities committed by Indian occupational forces against innocent civilians.”
ULF and The Resistance Front, another shadowy group said to be an arm of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror outfit, earlier claimed responsibility for other targeted attacks on civilians.
These groups are known to claim responsibility for such attacks so that banned terrorist groups can plausibly deny involvement.
ULF is most likely a front for Pakistan-based terror groups, and its claim could not immediately be verified.
HT has reached out to the J&K administration for a comment on the claim.
Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami, a four-time legislator from Kulgam, condemned the Wanpoh attack as barbaric. Such incidents have no place in a civilised society, he said.