SRINAGAR/JAMMU: Five people were killed and over 50 injured in a curfew-bound Kashmir Valley where top separatist leaders were arrested yesterday. Violence flared up in Jammu amid the simmering Amarnath land row leaving 30 protesters wounded.

Four civilians and a paramilitary trooper were killed in clashes between protesters and security forces in the valley, where indefinite curfew was clamped Sunday morning to foil separatists’ proposed march to Srinagar’s Lal Chowk.

Curfew was also clamped in Kathua town of Jammu after incidents of violence and arson over the Amarnath land row that has had the state on the boil for the last three months sparking off communal tensions.

The current crisis in Jammu and Kashmir started against the allotment of 40 hectares of forestland to a Hindu shrine board that manages the annual pilgrimage to Amarnath cave shrine in south Kashmir Himalayas.

The land allotment was revoked July 1 following protests in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, triggering counteragitation in the Hindu-dominated Jammu region.

In many parts of the valley, crowds yesterday took to streets defying the curfew, forcing the security forces to open fire in north Kashmir’s Narbal, Sumbal and Handwara towns and in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district.

According to the police, paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers opened fire on protesters after one of them fired a shot in north Kashmir’s Hajin town of Bandipora district, 40 km from Srinagar.

“As the police and the CRPF were warning the protesters to disperse, somebody from the mob fired at them injuring two paramilitary troopers and two policemen,” a police officer told IANS.

A student protester, identified as Shahid-ul-Islam, was killed in Sadrakote in Sumbal town, the police said, adding another was killed in Narbal, 12 km from Srinagar on the Srinagar-Uri-Muzaffarabad road, when security forces opened fire to disperse protesters marching toward city center Lal Chowk.

One more agitator was killed and 23 were injured when security forces fired at demonstrators marching from south Kashmir’s Pulwama district. A “stray bullet,” the police said, killed a woman identified as Fahmida in north Kashmir’s Handwara town. Seven people were injured during the protests there.

Earlier in the day, Yasin Malik, chief of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, was arrested in Srinagar when he attempted to march toward Lal Chowk for the planned sit-in to internationalize the Kashmir dispute.

Chairmen of respective factions of the separatist Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, were detained from their homes in Hyderpora and Nigeen late Sunday. The separatist leaders had put up a massive rally in Srinagar on Friday at the Eidgah grounds in the old city area where thousands offered prayers in response to a call by the Hurriyat Conference.

Violence and arson marked the shutdown in Jammu yesterday and traffic was off the roads following a call given by the Shri Amarnath Sangharsh Samiti (SASS), which spearheads the agitation for return of the piece of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB).

An indefinite curfew was imposed in Kathua town, 80 km southwest of Jammu, following incidents of arson and violence.