Protest clashes continue in Jammu and Kashmir

SRINAGAR: Kashmir Valley was shut again on Friday to mourn and protest the killings of 13 militants and 5 civilians in security forces’ actions past week. Meanwhile, another local militant was killed and a Pakistani cadre of Lashkar-e-Taiba arrested in two separate counterinsurgency operations in the Valley on Friday, the officials said.  

During the strike for which a call had been issued by ‘Kashmir Economic Alliance’, a conglomerate of traders’ organizations, clashes between stone-pelting mobs and security forces erupted at several places in and outside summer capital Srinagar. Dozens of protesters and security personnel including Station House Officer of Srinagar’s Nigeen police station, Manzoor Ahmed, were injured, the police and hospital sources said. The witnesses said that the police and central paramilitary forces fired scores of teargas canisters and stun grenades to quell protesters and stone-hurling crowds in different parts of the Valley.

The security forces enforced curfews like restrictions in central Srinagar and some other parts of the Valley “as a precautionary measure” following ‘Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL)’, the alliance of key separatist leaders, asked the people to hold “peaceful protests” against the killings after Friday prayers. While the separatist leaders were placed under house arrest or taken into ‘preventive’ custody by the police, the authorities locked the outer gates of Srinagar’s Grand Mosque to prevent people from assembling there.

The authorities have announced that schools and colleges in different parts of the Valley will  remain closed.