According to India Today TV, The Resistance Front (TRF), a breakaway group from Lashkar-e-Taiba based in Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the attack in Ganderbal district, Jammu and Kashmir, which resulted in the death of a doctor and six migrant laborers on Sunday.
TRF chief Shiekh Sajjad Gul was the mastermind of the attack
Sources said TRF leader Sheikh Sajjad Gul orchestrated the attack and directed the group’s local faction to carry it out, targeting both Kashmiris and non-Kashmiris simultaneously for the first time.
Sources reported that TRF has been operating in Kashmir for the past 18 months, focusing on Kashmiri Pandits, Sikhs, and individuals from outside the region, indicating a significant shift in their tactics compared to previous attacks on Kashmiri Pandits.
The terror group had carried out a recee of the attack site – a construction site in the Sonamarg area of Ganderbal district – for the last one month, sources said, adding that two to three terrorists were said to carry out the targeted killings.
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Based on initial accounts, the doctor and employees assaulted were members of the construction team building the Z-Morh tunnel, linking Gaganeer to Sonamarg in Ganderbal.
Officials informed news agency PTI that the attack took place after the laborers and other workers on the tunnel project at Gund in Ganderbal had returned to their camp late in the evening.
Jammu & Kashmir CM condemns the terror attack
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah strongly condemned the attack on “unarmed innocent people” that occurred only four days after his ‘swearing-in’.
The assault in Ganderbal on Sunday followed the murder of a migrant worker from Bihar in Shopian district on October 18 by terrorists. In April of this year, another migrant laborer, who was also from Bihar, was killed by terrorists in a deliberate attack in Anantnag district.
