Five Killed During Kashmir Protests
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
SRINAGAR, India — Soldiers and police fired at Muslim protesters demanding an end to Indian rule in Kashmir as authorities arrested top separatist leaders yesterday in a bid to quash unrest that has left at least 39 people dead since June.
The five latest deaths came late Sunday in Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city, and yesterday in two towns and one village when security forces confronted angry protesters defying a curfew in the Kashmir Valley, the Muslim heart of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.
At least 38 people with bullet injuries were hospitalized in Srinagar during daylong street protests, doctors said.
The state government said in a statement that soldiers opened fire yesterday after they were shot at by protesters, who wounded two soldiers and two police in Hajin, a village nearly 20 miles from Srinagar. At least 17 protesters were believed to have been wounded.
While there was no immediate reaction from the separatist groups that are organizing the protests, they have repeatedly said such accusations are an attempt by authorities to justify the use of force against unarmed civilians.
In a telephone call to a local news agency, Current New Service, a man identifying himself as Abdullah Gaznavi and a spokesman for the militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyeba condemned the arrest of separatist leaders.
“If atrocities against people of Kashmir are not stopped, the situation in India will change adversely for which the Indian government will solely be responsible,” Mr. Gaznavi told the news agency.
Meanwhile, two news photographers covering Kashmiri protests were allegedly beaten by paramilitary soldiers in Srinagar despite carrying curfew passes issued by the state government, the president of the Kashmir Press Photographers Association, Farooq Khan, said.
“They tore my curfew pass and later punched, kicked, and hit me with batons,” a photographer working for the Press Trust of India news agency, Omer Ganaie, said.
The paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force spokesman, Prabhakar Tripathi, said authorities were looking into the complaint.
