Death toll reaches 22 after days of Kashmir riots

POLICE shot dead a protester yesterday in Indian Kashmir, bringing the death toll from days of rioting to 22 as security was boosted on the eve of India’s Independence Day celebrations.

Police opened fire on dozens of stone-hurling demonstrators who marched in defiance of a four-day-old curfew in the disputed region’s main city Srinagar, killing one and wounding another, a doctor and residents said.

Srinagar and other parts of the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley have been the scene of some of the biggest anti-India protests to shake the region in two decades. At least 22 people have been killed and 600 injured since Monday.

“One person died of bullet injuries while another was injured,” a doctor at Srinagar’s main hospital said yesterday, after security forces opened fire in what authorities said was an attempt to disperse demonstrators.

The unrest, triggered by a Kashmir government move in June to donate land to a Hindu shrine trust — a decision later reversed — has shattered several years of relative calm brought about by the India-Pakistan peace process.

The protests in the Himalayan region have given new life to Kashmir’s independence movement.

Security forces were patrolling Srinagar and other troubled areas in Kashmir amid fears of attacks by Islamic militants today, India’s Independence Day.