Three killed in Kashmir clashes

Soldiers and police fired at Muslim protesters demanding an end to Indian rule in Kashmir overnight killing three people.

Authorities arrested top separatist leaders today in a bid to quash unrest that has left at least 37 people dead since June.

The three latest deaths came late last night in Srinagar, Kashmir’s main city, and today in a village on the city’s outskirts and a nearby town, when security forces confronted angry protesters defying a curfew in the Muslim heart of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.

The state government said in a statement that soldiers opened fire Monday after they were shot at by protesters, who wounded two soldiers and two police. At least 15 protesters were believed to have been wounded.

There was no immediate reaction from the separatist groups that are organising protests.

Kashmir’s crisis began in June when Muslims launched protests complaining that a government decision to transfer land to a Hindu shrine in Kashmir was actually a settlement plan meant to alter the religious balance in the region. After the plan was rescinded, Hindus took to the streets of Jammu, a predominantly Hindu city, demanding it be restored.

The unrest has unleashed pent-up tensions between Kashmir’s Muslims and Hindus and has threatened to snap the bonds between India and its only Muslim-majority state.

There was more unrest today in Jammu, where police fired tear gas to disperse thousands of stone-throwing Hindu protesters, police said.

And in much of the state – from the Hindu-dominated plains where Jammu lies to Muslim mountain villages near Srinagar – strikes shut down businesses and schools.

There were few cars on the roads, and markets stood empty as Srinagar prepared for what separatists leaders were billing as the largest protest to date. A rally on Friday attracted hundreds of thousands of people.

In an effort to head off today’s protests, authorities arrested two prominent separatist leaders, Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Omer Farooq, in pre-dawn raids, police said. Another separatist leader, Mohammed Yasin Malik, was arrested later for defying the curfew when he tried to march to the centre of Srinagar.

Police and soldiers were also out in force, patrolling on foot and in armoured vehicles.

Before his arrest Mr Farooq said that the detentions “will not deter our mission”.

Throughout the morning, pro-independence chants were blaring from the loudspeakers of mosques, and there were scattered protests, most of which were quickly dispersed by police and soldiers.

Kashmir has been divided between Hindu-majority India and Muslim Pakistan since 1947 when the two fought their first war over the region in the aftermath of Britain’s bloody partition of the subcontinent. Both countries continue to claim Kashmir in its entirety.

Separatist movements were mostly peaceful until the start of an Islamic insurgency in 1989. The rebels want to see India’s part of the region merged with Pakistan or given independence.

At least 68,000 people have been killed in the fighting.