SOHAL, India -- Sikh terrorists struck in three places in northern Punjab state Wednesday, killing nine people, including a prominent Communist official and three members of his family, police said. Five people were injured.
The largest of the Sikh militant groups waging a seccessionist campaign in the Punjab claimed responsibility for the killings, the latest in a series of bloody Sikh terror attacks this month. More than 500 people, mostly Hindus, have been killed this year in Sikh violence in the Punjab.
Police said the first attack occurred at about 1 a.m. at Sohal, 40 miles northeast of the Sikh holy city of Amritsar.
Six gunmen entered the farmhouse of Communist Party of India official Swaran Singh and climbed onto the roof, where the official, his wife, mother and daughter were asleep, police said. The gunmen opened fire with sub machineguns, killing the four instantly.
Police said the attackers then fired at people sleeping on the porch, killing a servant and wounding two farm workers.
Swaran Singh's two other daughters were seriously wounded in the 10-minute assault but his five-year-old son survived unscathed, police said. They said the assailants tried to set the house on fire before escaping on foot.
About 40 bullet holes could be seen where the extremists raked the house with gunfire. Carcasses of buffaloes and cows shot by the gunmen lay in the yard.
'I have lost my brother,' said Swaran Singh's sister, Darshan Kaur. 'The family is now ruined.
'God will not spare' the assailants,' she said. 'They will never sleep comfortably. Our poor people's curses will never go to waste and (they) will die the death of a dog.'
The Khalistan Commando Force, the most powerful extremist group fighting to create the independent nation of 'Khalistan' in the predominantly Sikh state of Punjab, left a note claiming responsibility.
It said Swaran Singh, vice president of the Amritsar district unit of the Communist Party of India, was killed because he helped organize a non-violent public awareness campaign against Sikh extremism in Punjab that ended last week.
More than 30 left-wing activists have been killed in the past three years in Punjab by extremists as India's two communist parties are outspoken opponents the establishment of 'Khalistan.'
Also Wednesday, police said Sikh militants burst into a home in Kortapur, 40 miles east of Amritsar, and killed a married couple and seriously injured another person. Police gave no motive for the killing of the two Hindus.
In Mahalpura, 90 miles east of the holy city, extremists also attacked Hindus, killing a shopkeeper and his son.
