More than 3000 pilgrims leave Jammu for Amarnath shrine day after attack

A fresh batch of 3,289 Amarnath pilgrims left in a convoy of 105 vehicles from the Yatri Niwas base here for the cave shrine early Tuesday morning amid tight security following an attack on a bus that left seven pilgrims dead the previous night.

A Yatra nodal officer at the base camp told Hindustan Times on phone that the batch includes 2283 males, 756 females, 219 sadhus and 31 sadhvis.

The convoy started rolling out from the camp at 3:07 am with the last vehicle leaving at 3:15 am, he said.

On Monday night around 8:20 pm, terrorists attacked a bus in Anantnag killing seven pilgrims and injuring 15 others, four of them seriously. Around 56 pilgrims from Gujarat were returning from Baltal after paying obeisance at the cave shrine when the bus was attacked.

Various political and social organisations have called for Jammu bandh on Tuesday.

Following the attack security in and around the base camp and 294-km long Jammu-Srinagar national highway have been tightened.

The 40-day long yatra started on June 29 and will end on August 7.

So far, nearly 1.40 lakh pilgrims have reached the cave shrine located at 3,888 metres above sea-level.

Just weeks ago, intelligence agencies had warned that militants were planning to target 100 policemen and as many Amarnath pilgrims to trigger communal violence, prompting the authorities to deploy more than 40,000 troops to protect the twin routes of the pilgrimage.

Police had used drone-mounted surveillance cameras, jammers, dog squads, bullet-proof bunkers, satellite tracking devices and other gadgets to secure the pilgrimage in view of increased militancy and violence in Kashmir.