Strict curfew after four new deaths in Kashmir

SRINAGAR: Thousands of Indian police and paramilitary forces enforced a strict curfew in much of Kashmir on Tuesday after security forces shot dead four protesters, police and witnesses said.

Government forces have struggled to contain almost three months of violent demonstrations by Kashmiris ignited by the killing of a 17-year-old student by police on June 11.

A total of 69 protesters and bystanders have been killed over the past three months, mostly by security forces who have used live ammunition on rallies after being pelted with stones.

Troops sealed off neighbourhoods in Srinagar and other towns with barbed wire, iron gates and abandoned carts to prevent residents from leaving their homes to stage protests against the killings.

“We are enforcing a strict curfew to maintain the peace,” police officer Pervez Ahmed told AFP.

Four people were killed Monday in the northern village of Palhalan when security forces opened fire on protesters during fresh demonstrations against Indian rule in Kashmir.

Residents told visiting reporters that the protests were peaceful and that no one was throwing stones at the time of the shooting.

Authorities have launched a probe.

“Senior police officers have taken a serious view of the firing. Ammunition of the policemen is being checked to fix the responsibility,” an official statement said.

The deaths brought people out onto the streets of Srinagar and other Muslim-dominated towns in Kashmir Monday evening and the anti-India demonstrations continued until early Tuesday, witnesses said.

In highway towns residents squatted on the roads and held noisy demonstrations amid chants of “Freedom for Kashmir!” and “Oh! Tyrants, oh! killers, leave our Kashmir.”

In Srinagar, young Kashmiris attacked several police stations with rocks, bricks and petrol bombs.

The Muslim-majority Kashmir region has been fought over by India and Pakistan since the partition of British-ruled India in 1947, with the region now cut in two along a UN-monitored line of control.

Many on the Indian side reject rule from New Delhi and an estimated 47,000 people have been killed in the violent insurgency that has raged for much of the past 20 years.