Clashes erupt in Kashmir after people’s march

SRINAGAR: Several people, including an AFP photographer, were injured Friday in Indian Kashmir when government forces thwarted a procession to a southern town reeling under curfew, police and witnesses said.
Police officer Abdul Gani Mir said the clashes erupted in Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar after troops prevented hundreds of people from marching to the southern town of Shopian.
Separatist groups had called for the march. Shopian has been under curfew for two weeks, following the killing of five people in two paramilitary shootings.
Clashes were also reported in the northern town of Baramulla.
Police said the injured included two photojournalists and two policemen.
Anti-India feelings run deep in Kashmir, where rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989. More than 68,000 people have been killed in the conflict, though resistance in recent years has mainly been shown through street protests.
A top separatist leader, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq had called for a mass march to Shopian, around 45 km from the state capital Srinagar, to protest the 12-day curfew in the town. Police and paramilitaries fired tear gas and pellet guns to prevent hundreds of rock throwing protestors in the Nowhatta area of the old town Srinagar from marching ahead.
“Two persons were injured including one with pellets,” Kashmir’s police chief Abdul Gani Mir told AFP. Eyewitness however said several were injured by pellet guns fired by the police.
The injured included AFP photographer Tauseef Mustafa and a cameraman working for Iran’s Press TV, both of whom were hit on the head by rocks. Both needed stitches but were not seriously injured. Authorities have imposed a round-the-clock curfew in Shopian since Sept. 8, a day after Indian paramilitary forces killed four men in the town.
The region has been tense since the latest killings, the victims of which were first described by the authorities as rebels but three of them were later identified as local students. The fourth man is yet to be identified and the government has instituted an enquiry into the incident.