SRINAGAR, 12 November — Twenty-eight people including 17 activists have been killed in the past 24 hours in the troubled Kashmir region, police said yesterday.
They said security forces shot dead 11 activists in two gun battles yesterday in the state’s Poonch district, 480 km southwest of Srinagar.
"Both gun battles were continuing when last reports came in," a police spokesman said. In another incident, eight people — seven activists and one civilian — were killed near Surankote in the same district, police said. Earlier on Saturday evening, three policemen were killed when rebels attacked a patrol at Tral, south of Srinagar.
Witnesses said angry policemen retaliated and torched nearly 40 shops and other buildings in the township.
A 10-year-old boy died in the blaze, they said. "They (policemen) fired indiscriminately and set ablaze shops in the area," Rashid Ahmad, a resident of Tral said. A police spokesman denied the charge and said the shops caught fire in the fighting between activists and policemen.
A front-line Kashmiri group yesterday claimed responsibility for the attack in Tral and said it had killed four police, not three as the authorities claimed.
"Our mujahideen attacked the SOG patrol at Tral and killed four policemen. Mujahideen also took away four rifles from the spot," a spokesman of Hizb-ul-Mujahedeen told newspaper offices in Srinagar.
Meanwhile, a senior Kashmiri leader said yesterday he had been put under house arrest to prevent him from visiting Tral — the township gripped by tension after the fierce encounter on Saturday.
