Massive protests were held and street clashes took place at various places across the Kashmir Valley on Sunday, leaving nearly 300 people injured.
Massive protests were held and street clashes took place at various places across the Kashmir Valley on Sunday, leaving nearly 300 people injured. Among the injured are two photojournalists and one of them has received pellet wounds in the left eye, abdomen and legs while covering a face-off between protesters and the police in Srinagar’s Rainawari locality.
Police and hospital sources said that more than one hundred protesters and about two dozen security personnel were injured in clashes in southern Shop-ian town alone where a mob also torched an official building — a mini secretariat-housing various government offices, including that of the district magistrate.
Elsewhere protests and clashes took place in various areas of Kulgam, Pulwama, Budgam, Anantnag, Kupwara, Srinagar and Baramulla districts. A police spokesman said that there was, however, no curfew in the Valley on Sunday, except in Srinagar areas falling under the police stations of Khanyar, Safakadal, Nowhatta, Rainawari and M.R Gunj.
Photojournalists Zuhaib Maqbool and Muzamil Mattoo were hit with pellets fired by the police while containing protests at Naiyar in Rainawari locality of Srinagar.
“The policeman who targeted us did see we are press photographers as we were covering a procession which had emerged from a school in the locality but he still fired his shotgun towards us,” said Mr Maqbool. Doctors who attended on him said that pellets have been lodged in his left eye, stomach and legs but his condition is “stable.”
