Protests in the tense Kashmir region spread as escalating violence left another 12 people dead in firing by security forces. The authorities clamped curfew in all ten districts of the Valley for the first time in 13 years.
Amid pro-freedom slogans, the body of senior Hurriyat Conference leader Shiekh Abdul Aziz, who was killed in police firing yesterday, was laid to rest at the Eidgah graveyard here today.
Defying the curfew, in force in the Srinagar city since yesterday, thousands of people, led by separatist leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mohammad Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, attended the burial amid calls for maintaining peace.
The death toll in firing by security forces rose to 18 today. Six people, including Aziz, were killed in yesterday’s firing during a march towards Muzaffarabad by thousands of people protesting against the “economic blockade” of the Valley by some Jammu-based groups agitating against the revocation of transfer of some land to the Amarnath shrine board.
In curfew-bound Kishtwar in the Jammu region, the army was called out after two persons were killed and over 20 others injured in clashes, police firing and a grenade blast, officials said.
Police earlier lobbed teargas shells to disperse groups belonging to two communities which pelted each other with stones at Kishtwar’s Hidyal Chowk.
Security forces opened fire in several areas in the Valley, killing three persons each in Aribal in Bandipora district and Lasjan in the outskirts of Srinagar, two in the Bagh-e-Mehtab area and one each in Rainawari and Zoonimar (all in Srinagar area) and one each in Ganderbal and Anantnag district, official sources said. One of the victims was a local journalist.
Hundreds of people were also injured in the day-long clashes between protesters and law-enforcing agencies, who had to resort to firing, teargas shelling and lathicharge to block the march towards Muzaffarabad, they said.
Despite imposition of curfew in the city, hundreds of people came out on the roads to protest the killings.
Today’s march by the Kashmir Fruit Growers Association, the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Traders Federation, both factions of the Hurriyat Conference and the the People’s Democratic Party followed a call for “Muzaffarabad chalo” to “neutralise” the economic blockade “enforced” by the Shri Amarnath Sangarsh Samiti, spearheading the shrine land stir in the Jammu region.
Police also opened fire in Kakpura in Pulwama district and in Shirmal in Shopian. Police said some of its men were injured when protesters hurled stones at them in Sopore, another of the several towns from where the protesters set out.
Curfew was earlier imposed along a 40-km stretch on Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road from Sheeri to Uri in Baramullah district to prevent thousands of marchers from crossing the LoC.
