Kashmir stone-pelters kill man: Indian police

SRINAGAR: Anti-India protesters stoned a bus in Indian Kashmir on Friday, killing a passenger as the region was again convulsed by violent demonstrations, police said.

Police said that the 42-yearold man was hit in the head as he travelled through Srinagar, the Kashmiri summer capital, and later died in hospital. “A murder case has been registered. We will find the killers,” Srinagar police chief Javed Reyaz Bedar told reporters. Later in the day, police fired teargas and charged hundreds of protesters, who tried to march to the high-security office of the United Nations to protest against alleged human rights violations by Indian security forces.

Young anti-India Muslims often throw stones at security forces during protests that frequently disrupt the volatile and violent Muslim-majority Kashmir valley. “The elements involved in this killing can never be wellwishers of Kashmir’s freedom struggle,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, head of the moderate faction of the region’s separatist alliance. “The act is highly condemnable,” he said. Earlier, the Indian military said on Friday it had killed three suspected militants as they attempted to enter Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani side of the disputed region.

The fresh violence came a day after the prime ministers of India and Pakistan agreed to work towards resuming their frozen peace dialogue when they met in Bhutan for their first direct talks in nine months. The heavily militarised 760-kilometre Line of Control divides Kashmir between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, who both claim the whole territory and have fought two wars over it. The insurgency launched against Indian rule in 1989 has claimed more than 47,000 lives by the official count.