Mob hoists Pakistan flag at Mufti house

Surging crowds on Tuesday while mourning the killing of three Islamic militants, who were killed on Monday in a police encounter in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district, pelted stones at the ancestral house of chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed in the highway town of Bijbehara.

The incident occurred in Baba Mohalla of Bijbehara, 48-km south of Srinagar, when a mob attacked the house with bricks and hung Pakistan’s national flag outside its first floor window, witnesses said. Security forces guarding the house, which the Muftis have not used for decades since they shifted to state capital Srinagar, fired few warning shots in the air to scare the protesters.

Soon irate crowds of youth fought pitched battles with the police and the CRPF, leaving over a dozen people, including three policemen, injured.

Witnesses said the security personnel fired dozens of teargas canisters into and rifle shots over the heads of stone-pelting mobs.

The traffic along the vital Srinagar-Jammu highway was diverted through Kulgam-Shopian belt of south Kashmir. The rail services between Banihal in Jammu region and Srinagar were also suspended as a precautionary measure, the officials said.

Kashmir Valley was partially shut to mourn the killing of the Hizbul Mujahideen militants in a gunfight.