SRINAGAR: At least 50 people were injured when baton-wielding police in Kashmir fired tear gas shells yesterday to disperse hundreds of Muslims protesting at Israeli strikes on Gaza, police and witnesses said. There were also demonstrations in other Indian cities, including New Delhi and Hyderabad.
In Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar, angry demonstrators shouting “Down with Zionist terrorism, down with Israel” burned American and Israeli flags near Kashmir’s grand mosque, Jamia Masjid. Police also clashed with stone-throwing demonstrators in several other parts of the city. Most of the protests were staged after Friday prayers.
“Policemen and some photojournalists are among the injured,” Mohammad Syed, a police official said.
Around 250 Muslims in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad also protested against the offensive outside the recently opened US consulate yesterday, police said.
They tried to set fire to an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert but were stopped by police. There were further large protests in the Muslim-majority old part of the city.
A Reuters witness saw similar scenes in the capital, New Delhi, as protesters gathered outside India’s largest mosque, similarly called Jama Masjid, to burn Israeli and American flags and an effigy. The Indian government has joined international calls for a halt to the conflict, and promised $1 million in financial aid to affected families in Gaza.
In Srinagar earlier yesterday, the chief priest of Kashmir and senior separatist leader, Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, led thousands of worshippers in a mass prayer for the slain Palestinians.
“Why is the world community silent when innocent, unarmed Muslims are killed in hundreds by Israel? It is a naked aggression,” Farooq said at the city’s grand mosque. “Muslim countries must unite to fight for the liberation of Palestine, Iraq , Afghanistan and Kashmir.”
Meanwhile, two soldiers and six militants have been killed in two shootouts in Kashmir, the first violence since state elections in the Muslim-majority region, the army said yesterday.
The first gunbattle erupted late Thursday in the southern district of Poonch after Indian troops, acting on a tip-off, carried out a search operation of a densely forested area.
“As we closed in, the militants opened fire, killing two of our soldiers,” an army officer told AFP, asking not to be named. He said one militant was killed in the return of fire. Three more were killed when soldiers launched a fresh offensive early yesterday, the officer said.
Indian troops shot dead two more militants during a separate gunbattle in northern Baramulla district, police said. The violence was the first since the completion of seven-stage state elections on Dec. 24. Despite a boycott call by separatists and militants more than 60 percent of voters took part.
The regional pro-India National Conference (NC) and India’s ruling Congress party decided to form the government after polls produced a fractured legislature. A Muslim insurgency in Indian Kashmir has claimed at least 47,000 lives in the past two decades.
A meeting of Jammu and Kashmir coalition partners also decided there would be no rotation of the chief minister’s post between the two parties in the state and the NC’s Omar Abdullah will head the government for the full six-year term.
“There will not be any rotational chief ministership and there will be a deputy chief minister from the Jammu region,” Omar Abdullah, who is also NC’s president, told reporters. Congress sources disclosed the deputy chief minister would be from their party.
The oath-taking of the new 25-member ministry would be held in Srinagar on Jan 5, a day ahead of a meeting of all chief ministers convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss internal security. Sonia Gandhi is expected to attend the swearing-in.
— With input from Mukhtar Ahmad
