SRINAGAR: Thousands of police and paramilitary troops in riot gear patrolled the deserted streets of Indian Kashmir’s largest city yesterday as a general strike called by separatist groups closed businesses and shut down public transportation.
The weekend strike in Srinagar was announced Friday during the largest protest against Indian rule in more than a decade, intensifying the turmoil that has roiled the Himalayan region for almost two months.
“There’s been no violence reported from anywhere and we’ve taken adequate security measures to deal with any lawand- order problems,” said Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force.
But violence occurred elsewhere in the region yesterday, with police firing tear gas and using bamboo batons to disperse groups of Hindus and Muslims who defied a curfew and clashed in Poonch, a town 270 kilometers northwest of Jammu, senior police official K. Rajendra said.
In Srinagar, shops, schools, banks and businesses remained closed for a second day running. There were similar shutdowns in other towns in the Kashmir Valley.
The strike is set to continue until tomorrow, when separatists plan to hold a protest sit-in at Lal Chowk, the heart of Srinagar.
Meanwhile, an Indian military officer and a dozen separatist guerrillas were among 15 people killed in a gunbattle raging near the border with Pakistan in Indian Kashmir, the army said.
The clash, one of the deadliest in recent months, broke out on Friday morning at Machil near the Line of Control, a military demarcation that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
The dead included a colonel and two soldiers. “We are suspecting some more militants are hiding in the area, the operation still continues,” Indian army spokesman Lt. Col. A.K. Mathur said.
There has been a surge of skirmishes along the border and New Delhi accuses Pakistan of arming, training and pushing militants into Kashmir to fight India’s rule in the region — a charge Islamabad denies.
India says decades-old UN resolutions calling for a referendum on Kashmir’s future are “obsolete.” On Friday, hundreds of thousands of people massed in Srinagar to demand “azadi” or freedom and to protest against New Delhi’s rule in the second major demonstration this week.
