SRINAGAR, India: A Hindu protester was shot dead in an army firing in Indian Kashmir yesterday as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held talks with the nation’s political parties in a bid to defuse tensions in the region.
The protester died in a mostly Hindu area when the army opened fire to quell violent demonstrators who defied a curfew and blocked a highway in a bid to impose an economic blockade on the mainly Muslim Kashmir valley, police said. “The army had to open fire after police failed to control the unruly mob,” a police officer said, asking not to be identified.
Shops and post offices were shuttered in the summer capital Srinagar, urban hub of an Islamic separatist revolt that has raged since 1989 and left at least 43,000 dead. There were similar shutdowns in other mostly Muslim areas of the state. Separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani, who called the strike, warned authorities not to “please (Hindu) fanatics” by transferring land to the Hindu shrine.
In Srinagar, protesters fought running battles with police near the main mosque and several other places.
Government officials said the country’s major political parties had decided at talks in New Delhi yesterday to send representatives to the troubled region to assess the situation.
Meanwhile, Indian and Pakistani troops yesterday exchanged gunfire across the Line of Control that divides Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir for more than 20 minutes, Indian defense sources said. Pakistani troops opened fire on three Indian posts across the de facto border in the Nowgam sector of Kupwara district, the sources said.
