Kashmiri Muslims protest assault by Hindus

Author: 
Mukhtar Ahmad I Arab News
Publication Date: 
Fri, 2008-08-08 03:00

SRINAGAR: Security forces fired tear gas and used batons yesterday to break up hundreds of angry protesters who say Hindus are assaulting Muslims in the Indian portion of Kashmir, police said. The protesters hurled rocks at police and paramilitary soldiers at several places in Srinagar, said Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force.

The Muslims claim they are being targeted in Jammu, the only Hindu-majority city in the state, with Hindu mobs attacking their shops and homes and chanting slogans demanding Muslim Kashmiris leave the area. They say security forces are not doing enough to protect them. Shops, businesses and schools remained closed in protest for a third day in Srinagar, a Muslim-majority city.

Yasin Malik, the head of the pro-independence Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front who had been on a hunger strike for the last three days to protest the alleged attacks on Muslims, was rushed to a hospital yesterday when his blood pressure dropped, said Mohammed Altaf, the group’s spokesman. The Indian Army is deploying around 10,000 extra soldiers in Kashmir to quell weeks of protests. The troops will be deployed around Jammu. “This troop strength is in addition to large contingents of paramilitary forces and police already deployed to contain the unrest,” a senior army officer, asking not to be named, told reporters.

Anger between Hindus and Muslims in the Himalayan region has flared since June when the government in Jammu-Kashmir decided to award 99 acres (40 hectares) of land to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, a trust that maintains the Amarnath shrine.

Meanwhile, Kashmir fruit growers association yesterday announced its plan to transport its fruit to various markets in India via Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road, with first of such convoys scheduled for the trans-Line of Control (LoC) journey on Monday.

At a meeting held in the north Kashmir apple rich town of Sopore yesterday morning, the association took stock of the situation arising out the blockade of the national highway falling in the Jammu region of the state.

With input from agencies

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