8 hurt in mob-security forces clash in Kashmir

At least eight people, including three policemen, were injured when stone-pelting protestors clashed with security personnel in Bandipora town of Kashmir Valley even as people defied curfew to participate in a protest march on Wednesday.

Curfew was clamped in four districts of the Valley in view of a separatist-called protest march to the United Nations office in Srinagar.

However, protestors, defying the orders, took out a procession in Bandipora town and started pelting stones on security forces when the latter baton-charged them to disperse the crowd.

Security forces also lobbed tear smoke shells and fired Pump Action Guns to bring the situation under control.

Five civilians and three policemen were injured in the clashes.

Meanwhile, curfew was clamped in Srinagar, Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora districts, besides Awantipora town, on Wednesday morning to thwart the march called by moderate faction of Hurrriyat to the office of the UN Military Observers’ Group for India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP).

The march is supported by the hardline faction headed by Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

Several separatist leaders have been put under house arrest and Hurriyat activists taken into preventive custody since Tuesday night.

Protestors were blocked at various locations, including at the Srinagar-Baramulla National Highway in Palhalan area, late Tuesday night.

Meanwhile, Hurriyat-called ‘black day’ and a general strike was observed on Wednesday to protest the landing of Army in Kashmir on this day in 1947, a day after then Maharaja Hari Singh signed the instrument of accession with the Union of India.

Kashmir Valley had been on the boil since mid-June with over 100 people killed in clashes between stone-pelting mobs and security forces.