At least eight persons have been killed and 27 others injured, many critically, in a powerful blast inside a police station in Nowgam, on the outskirts of Srinagar city, on Friday night, officials said.
The blast occurred at the Nowgam police station in Jammu and Kashmir at around 11.20 pm. The fatalities include policemen and forensic experts who were conducting an inspection of explosives, including ammonium nitrate, which they had seized while unearthing an inter-state terror module recently.
The police station was seen engulfed in huge flames which also claimed the lives of two officials from the Srinagar civil administration, including a Naib Tehsildar, officials said.
Officials who reached the spot said casualties may rise further since the intensity of the blast was so massive that it caused partial destruction of nearby structures, with the shockwave felt several miles away. Many vehicles parked on the police station’s premises also caught fire.
Rescue teams from the fire services, police, and paramedics rushed victims to hospitals, including the army’s 92 Base Hospital and SKIMS.
Authorities have confirmed the incident to be a ‘handling error’, not a terrorist attack, prompting reviews of explosive storage protocols.
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The 360 kilograms of explosive material being examined was brought from Faridabad in Haryana by the Jammu and Kashmir police after having seized it from the rented residence of one Dr. Muzzamil Ganaie, an accused in the “white collar” terror module, who is among the eight persons arrested so far in the case.
It was not immediately clear whether the entire 360 kg of explosives was stored at the police station, where a case in the terror module bust had been registered on October 19, when the police spotted pro-Jaish-e-Muhammad posters in the area and subsequently launched an investigation that led to the arrest of seven locals.
It also led to the arrest of Dr. Adeel Ahmad Rather on November 1 and subsequently one more doctor, Dr. Muzamil Ahmad Ganaie alias Musaib, from Kashmir.
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