Violent clashes lead to curfew

2008-08-20 14:07

Srinagar - A fresh curfew was ordered in the Jammu region of India-administered Kashmir following demonstrations and clashes between protesters and security forces, officials said on Wednesday.

Violent protests erupted in Jammu city on Tuesday evening as hundreds of Hindus demonstrated against the state government revoking a decision to allot land to the popular Hindu Amarnath pilgrimage shrine.

Security forces fired in the air and lobbed teargas shells to disperse angry mobs which assaulted the police and pelted them with stones.

About 40 people, among them 14 policemen, were injured in the clashes that continued late into the night, police said.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Sri Amarnath Yatra Sangharsh Samiti, the organisation leading the protests, agreed to hold talks with the Jammu and Kashmir state government, which administers the India-controlled part of Kashmir.

India's top security official, National Security Advisor MK Narayanan was in the state capital Srinagar for talks with state governor NN Vohra to seek a solution to the impasse, Home Ministry officials in New Delhi said.

The situation in the Kashmir valley, the Muslim-majority upper part of the state, where the shrine is located, also remained tense and volatile.

In June, scores of Kashmiris joined calls by the separatist Hurriyat Conference to protest the transfer of a 40-hectare plot of land to the Amarnath shrine board, which led to the withdrawal of the order.

The reversal of the decision triggered clashes in the mainly Hindu region of Jammu through July as people protested for the reinstatement of the order.

The Jammu rallies sharpened the communal divide and re-ignited the protests in the Kashmir valley which took on a separatist hue. At least 23 people died last week when police opened fire in the most wide-spread anti-India demonstrations in the region since the 1990s.

State officials in the Kashmir valley described the situation as "calm but tense" even as separatist leaders said they would resume the protests on Friday.

Meanwhile, an estimated 75 000 people have courted arrest in Jammu since Monday as part of a move by protesters to fill jails. Hundreds of protesters were arrested on Tuesday after clashes with police.

Indian government officials are said to be extremely worried over the religious polarisation in the state and were making efforts to resume talks in both regions.

State authorities have also deployed additional forces in the affected areas to contain the spiralling violence. - Sapa-dpa

- SAPA