After the terror attack on Amarnath pilgrims, a fresh batch of 3,289 Amarnath pilgrims left to visit the temple in a convoy of 105 vehicles from the Yatri Niwas base here for the cave shrine early Tuesday morning amid tight security. An officer at the base camp said 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, reported Hindustan Times.
On Monday, 7 pilgrims were killed and at least 15 injured in a terror attack against the Amarnath Yatris in Kashmir’s Anantnag district. Around 56 pilgrims from Gujarat were returning from Baltal after paying obeisance at the cave shrine when the bus was attacked. As a repercussion to the incident, various political and social organisations have called for Jammu bandh on Tuesday.
Security has been tightened around the base camp and 294-km long Jammu-Srinagar national highway. So far, nearly 1.40 lakh pilgrims have reached the cave shrine located at 3,888 metres above sea-level. It is to be noted that the intelligence had given a prior warning 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.
