OCCUPIED SRINAGAR, July 10, (APP/AFP) – Protesters
and government forces in Indian Held Kashmir clashed for a second day
Sunday as anger over the death of an influential rebel leader boiled
over, with 18 people killed in some of the worst civilian unrest to hit
the region since 2010.
Another 200 people have been wounded in the violence, many of them
protesters who were hit when government forces fired tear gas canisters and
live ammunition on Saturday.
Among the 18 dead was a police man, who drowned when angry protesters pushed an armoured vehicle into a river in the southern district of Sangam on Sunday, a police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Thousands of residents of the disputed region are defying a
government-imposed curfew to take to the streets in protest at the killing on Friday of pro-freedom leader Burhan Wani.
The state government, which has also cut off internet and mobile phone networks to try to stop the protests spreading, called for calm on Sunday.
“They (protesters) should not take their protests to a level where
a man holding a gun is forced to open fire,” said spokesman Nayeem Akhtar.
There were also reports of security forces attacking hospitals and
ambulances treating the wounded.
“Attacking hospitals and ambulances is a crime under the international humanitarian law and Indian armed forces have been repeatedly accused of this crime in Kashmir,” said the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, a rights group, in a statement.
Wani, a 22-year-old commander of Kashmir’s largest pro-leberation group Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), was killed along with two others during a brief gun-battle with government forces.
Police say protesters have set police stations on fire and thrown rocks at army camps in the south of the restive region.
– Uptick in violence –
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It is the worst civilian violence to hit the restive region since 2010, when mass protests broke out against Indian rule.
Wani joined the HM group at the age of just 15, and was viewed as
a hero by many in Kashmir. The state’s former chief minister Omar Abdullah
tweeted after his death that he had become the “new icon of Kashmir’s
disaffected”.
Witnesses said tens of thousands attended his funeral on Saturday despite the curfew, chanting independence slogans and firing pistol shots
in his honour.
HM is one of several groups that for decades have been fighting around half a million Indian troops deployed in the region.