Journalists in Kashmir vulnerable to attacks

Srinagar, May 21 : Journalists in Kashmir have long been vulnerable to attacks and are exposed to dangerous situations while performing their duties.

The thrill of being at the site of an incident, or to reach the spot first, has taken the lives of many mediapersons during the past 16 years of violence and bloodshed.

About a dozen journalists have been killed in Kashmir since 1989.

And today, several journalists escaped death at Sher-i-Kashmir Municipal Park here as they gathered to cover a rally organised by the Jammu and Kashmir Congress to mark the 15th death anniversary of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

A few mediapersons were wounded as two ''fidayeen (members of the suicide attack)'' attacked the Congress meeting, killing five people and injuring several others, including the senior most Jammu and Kashmir Police official.

Bilal Bahadur, a photo-journalist with The Week, a national news magazine, was injured in the melee after the attack.

''We were astonished to see a man wearing a police uniform firing at the stage where many top state Congress leaders were present. We screamed at him to stop this non-sense, but he was unstoppable. He continued to fir indiscriminately,'' he said.

''For few seconds, I thought we are dead,'' said Naveen Nawaz, the Srinagar Bureau Chief of Dainik Jagran, a leading Hindi daily.

''Why are you firing at the people? I asked the gunman. He stared at me for a moment and then resumed the firing,'' said Nawaz who suffered a minor injury in the attack.

''We took shelter in the Sher-i-Kashmir reading room, a building in the premises of the Park. We were later evacuated when one of our colleagues and a senior police official came with a bullet-proof jeep and took us to safety,'' Bahadur said.

The other journalists too had similar tales to narrate.

UNI