SRINAGAR: Indian police opened fire on protestors in Kashmir on Tuesday as small groups took to the streets in defiance of curfew orders, a day after violence in which 18 people died.
Reports in the media indicate that Indian police were patrolling the streets threatening to shoot anyone defying a curfew imposed after Monday's violence citing shoot on sight orders issued by the police.
Officials said four people were wounded in fresh police firing in the northern district of Baramulla and in the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's main town.
On Monday, the disputed region suffered its bloodiest day in three months of unrest, with 17 protestors killed in police shootings. One police officer also died. Separatist demonstrators torched a Christian school and other buildings in violence stoked by the desecration of the Quran in Washington at the weekend.
Furious protests have erupted almost daily in Muslim-majority Kashmir since a teenage student was killed by a police teargas shell in Srinagar on June 11.
The death unleashed a wave of public anger, with security forces firing live rounds to control violent demonstrations by stone-pelting anti-India protesters.
Clashes over the summer have left 88 civilians dead, mostly killed by the security forces. Thousands of heavily-armed police and paramilitary officers enforced a round-the-clock, indefinite curfew across all major towns in the Kashmir valley on Tuesday. Riot police and paramilitary forces patrolled the deserted streets of central Srinagar. Neighbourhoods and road intersections were sealed with barbed wire, and police shouted at residents to stay indoors. Flights to and from Srinagar were suspended because of security concerns and curfew restrictions, airport officials said.
"I think it's the most serious problem confronting New Delhi since the start of insurgency some 20 years ago," Noor Ahmed Baba, a political science professor at Kashmir's main university, told AFP. "The protests are indigenous, mass-based and widespread."
Defence Minister AK Antony said on Tuesday the government was "pained" by the violence and admitted the situation was "very serious". He said that an all-party meeting would be held in Delhi on Wednesday, and the government would afterwards take a decision on whether to partially lift a 20-year-old emergency law that is despised by many in Kashmir.
"Before we take a final decision, we will take into confidence all the major parties so that everybody is involved," he told reporters.
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act was introduced in Kashmir in 1990, giving army and paramilitary troops sweeping powers to open fire, detain suspects and confiscate property, as well as protecting them from prosecution. Kashmir police chief Kuldeep Khoda blamed Iran's state-run Press TV for fanning simmering tension with a report on a group of Christians who tore pages from the Quran outside the White House on Saturday.
Local authorities later banned the station from broadcasting on cable channels in Kashmir, where there was already anger at a previous plan by a Florida pastor to burn the Quran.
Some of Monday's worst rioting was in Tangmarg village, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Srinagar, where a crowd chanted anti-US and pro-Islam slogans before burning down a missionary school. The school was empty at the time, but at least six civilians were killed when security forces fired on the crowd after they set government buildings ablaze, police said.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan but claimed in full by both. Since 1989, an anti-India insurgency has raged in the part ruled by New Delhi, claiming an estimated 47,000 lives. A majority of Kashmiris favour independence for the region, according to polls. The US ambassador to India, Timothy J Roemer, said Monday he was "dismayed" at the latest violence and repeated President Barack Obama's condemnation of the Quran-ripping.
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