SRINAGAR: Two more people were killed and 50 others wounded yesterday as the widespread protests have paralyzed life in Kashmir. Protests against a land transfer for a Hindu pilgrimage spread yesterday as business activity in the state capital Srinagar and other areas came to a halt, news reports and officials said.

Police arrested 11 people for rioting and fired in the air to disperse hundreds of Kashmiris protesting for a third day yesterday against the transfer of land to a Hindu shrine in this Muslim-majority region, police said.

Two people were killed and nearly 100 others, including 22 policemen, were injured in clashes between groups led by the separatist All Parties Hurriyat Conference and the police in Srinagar since Monday, police said. Police and paramilitary forces were also dispatched to Budgam, Pulwama, Anantnag, Baramulla and Bandipore districts which have witnessed protests against the state government’s controversial move.

At least 27 protesters suffered minor injuries during scuffles with police, who also used tear gas and wooden sticks after protesters pelted them with stones in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir, said Afadul Mujtaba, a senior police officer.

The anti-India demonstrations spread across the Kashmir valley yesterday and most shops and businesses were shut as protests entered their third day against the allotment of 99 acres (40 hectares) of land by the state government to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust running a popular Hindu shrine.

Later yesterday, protesters stoned a bus carrying Indian tourists, lightly wounding five people, and set fire to a tourist rest area and hut, said police officer Javed Koul. One person was killed in the violence on Monday.

Protesters accuse the Indian government of planning to build Hindu settlements in India’s only Muslim majority state to change the demographic balance in the region. Protesters in Ganderbal, a small town 20 kilometers northeast of Srinagar, briefly interrupted the pilgrimage to Amarnath, said Abdul Majid, the local administrator. The town falls on the pilgrims’ route.

In a bid to ease tensions, Ghulam Nabi Azad, the chief minister of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state, announced there would be no construction on the transferred land. Azad also pledged to meet members of all the political parties in the state to try to address the protesters grievances. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus, who consider the cave sacred, are currently visiting the cave on an annual pilgrimage.

Separatists have targeted the pilgrimage in the past, charging that Hindu-majority India uses the annual religious event as a political statement to bolster its claim over the Himalayan region, which is divided between Pakistan and India but claimed by both.

About a dozen militant groups have been fighting since 1989 for the independence of Kashmir or its merger with neighboring Pakistan. At least 68,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

In Srinagar, groups took out protest marches and shops, business establishments and educational institutions remained closed while bus services remained off the roads. In some areas of the city, police used batons and tear gas to disperse angry mobs that pelted stones targeting police and their vehicles.

Meanwhile, the Hindu pilgrimage was suspended as protesters blocked the shrine route and pelted stones at police personnel and vehicles carrying Hindu pilgrims, the IANS reported.

The government said the land was allotted for construction of facilities for the pilgrims, including prefabricated huts and toilets. But Hurriyat leaders said the decision to transfer land was part of a conspiracy to settle non-Muslims in the Muslim-majority state.

— With input from agencies