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INDIA-KASHMIR-UNREST LEAD
Eleven dead as gunfight sparks protests in Indian Kashmir: police
SRINAGAR, India, Dec 15, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Seven civilians were killed as
Indian troops fired on protesters Saturday after a gunfight left three armed
rebels and a soldier dead in the disputed region of Kashmir, police and
hospital officials said.
The fighting erupted soon after troops laid siege to a house in the
southern Pulwama area in Indian-administered Kashmir where the militants were
hiding, a police officer said.
Three armed militants — including a former soldier who had joined the
rebels — then jumped out of the house into an orchard to fight the soldiers
and were killed.
The fighting also left a soldier of the Indian army dead, senior police
officer Swayam Prakash Pani told AFP.
While the gunfight was in progress, hundreds of villagers poured out on to
the streets in freezing cold and marched towards the orchard, shouting
slogans in support of the militants and throwing stones at the troops,
witnesses said.
“It was mayhem. Six protesters died in the ensuing firing by soldiers,” a
police officer told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Hospital officials said a seventh man died later of gunshot wounds.
Dozens of protestors were also injured in the clashes with government
forces, another police officer said.
Authorities suspended mobile internet services in many areas of the restive
territory, including in the main city of Srinagar. A large number of students
also held protests against the killings.
Protests spread to the old quarters of Srinagar and the northwestern town
of Sopore.
Saturday’s bloodshed capped the deadliest year in the region since 2009,
with nearly 550 killed so far including some 150 civilians, according to a
monitoring group.
– Support for rebels on rise –
Security officials say some 230 militants have been killed this year, most
of them locals from the Kashmir valley, but rebel groups have recruited new
members at a matching pace.
Popular support for the rebels and their cause has increased since the
killing of a charismatic militant leader in 2016.
Villagers, sometimes in their thousands, have been swarming sites of gun
battles with government forces to help militants escape from military
cordons.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of
British colonial rule over the subcontinent in 1947. Both claim the disputed
Himalayan territory in full.
Rebel groups have fought for decades about 500,000 Indian soldiers deployed
in the territory New Delhi controls, seeking Kashmir’s independence or its
merger with Pakistan. More than 70,000 people have died in the fighting since
1989, mostly civilians.
New Delhi regularly accuses Pakistan of arming and training rebels to
launch attacks on Indian forces, an allegation Islamabad denies saying it
only provides political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris fighting for the
right to self-determination.
Separatists opposed to Indian rule of Kashmir called for a three-day
general strike to protest Saturday’s killings and announced a march on Monday
to the military headquarters in Srinagar.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a senior member of the unified Joint Resistance
Leadership group, took to Twitter to vent anger at government action, saying
the Indian forces should “kill all of us at one time rather than killing us
daily”.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1739 hrs