Dragon Fire

Srinagar, Kashmir, India

The fireball swept off the lawn of the Badami Bagh Cantonment with the wind, down towards the lake and into the market, sucking everything into its wake. The blasts of explosions from two separate warheads crushed together like the confluence of rivers. Barely anything survived in the first few seconds. Those on the outer fringes who did miraculously live spoke of the roaring winds of hell and the searing inferno which engulfed their loved ones in death. The flimsy buildings in central Srinagar caught light. Gas cylinders and fuel tanks blew up, as if smaller bombs had been planted in the most crowded streets. The victims tried to push their way out to open spaces. The weak were trampled to death. Stampedes took hold and panic swept through the city. Flames leapt into the sky, and after the enormous noise of explosions died down, screams for help could be heard, desperate, weak and sometimes horribly short and solitary until death took over. With their clothes in flames, many jumped into the cold waters of the Dal Lake only to be dragged down, or caught up in weeds and drowned there. The emergency services could do little. They could barely get into the streets, and had no equipment or medical services to deal with such a tragedy.

A single artillery shell or mortar landing in a crowded market place can do appalling damage. The destruction of a conventional missile warhead is unimaginable. The market was not a big one, nor was it buried within the warren of streets of old Srinagar, where the casualties would have been far higher. But it was by the Dal Lake, where traders set up stalls around the bus station, a place of transit, meeting, talking and buying, the first flavour of Kashmir which many visitors saw when they arrived.

More than two hundred soldiers died at the military headquarters, including the corps commander. By noon, it was clear that the missile strike had killed at least seven hundred Kashmiris in central Srinagar. Many more were expected to die, and by the end of the day the dreadful pictures of the aftermath of the attack were formulating the international policy which would last for generations.