SRINAGAR: Four protesters and a police officer were killed in Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday, police said, raising the death toll in violence sparked by the death of a separatist to 20 since Friday.
Protests erupted after security services on Friday evening shot dead 22-year-old separatist leader Burhan Wani. His death came amid a rise in violence and separatist sentiment across the state.
The director general of Jammu and Kashmir Police, K Rajendra Kumar, told reporters that 100 members of the security forces had been wounded and that three were missing.
In addition, “miscreants threw a police vehicle into River Jhelum”, south of the state’s summer capital of Srinagar, killing the officer inside, he said.
On Saturday, police had said that angry crowds set fire to three police stations and two government buildings south of Srinagar, and blocked roads.
Kumar put the protester death toll at 15, but a second officer, who asked to remain anonymous, said four more died on Sunday in clashes with security forces, raising the total number of deaths to 20.
Wani was the leader of Hizb-ul Mujahideen, a group fighting Indian occupation of the Muslim-majority region. His social media videos show him wearing military fatigues and calling for jihad against the Indian forces.
Activists and separatist leaders have criticised the security forces’ response to the protests, accusing them of using excessive force.
“It is shocking and painful that Indian armed forces have yet again unleashed terror on the mourners and protesters, resulting in massive civilian casualties,” Khurram Parvez, an activist with rights group the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition for Civil Society, said in a statement.
The local government has appealed to the public and separatist political leaders to help calm the situation.
A curfew has been imposed in the Indian-held Kashmir after protesters’ killing. Divisional Commissioner Asghar Hussain Samoon told the media in Srinagar that curfew had been imposed in the entire Valley. No one is allowed to come out of his home. Reports from south Kashmir said that an ambulance driver carrying the injured was badly beaten by Indian troops in the Islamabad district. The forces also damaged the ambulance.
Meanwhile, a two-day shutdown is being observed in the entire Kashmir Valley from Sunday. Call for the strike has been jointly given by All Parties Hurriyat Conference Chairman Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik against the killing spree unleashed by the Indian Army and police following the killing of Wani.
Farooq has termed recent killings of innocent youths by Indian troops as declaration of war against the people in held Kashmir.
Speaking on a programme of Radio Pakistan’s Current Affairs Channel, he said indiscriminate firing on peaceful demonstrators showed the Indian government had given task to troops and police to kill maximum Kashmiris.
Pakistan on Sunday strongly condemned the extra-judicial killing of Kashmiri leader Burhan Wani and scores of other innocent Kashmiris in the Indian-held Kashmir, terming such acts as “deplorable and condemnable”.
“Such acts are a violation of fundamental human rights of Kashmiris and cannot deter the people of Jammu and Kashmir from their demand for the realisation of the right to self-determination,” the Foreign Office said in a press release.
“Pakistan reiterates that the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is only possible by the realization of the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, as per the UNSC resolutions, through a fair and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices,” it added.
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