SRINAGAR: A third straight day of clashes between security forces and anti-India protesters in Kashmir killed seven people Sunday, four of them in blasts triggered by an attack on a police station.
Despite strict curfews across the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley -- including the main city of Srinagar -- large numbers of demonstrators took to the streets in many districts, police said.
Indian Kashmir has been wracked by pro-independence protests since a 17-year-old student was killed by a police teargas shell in early June. Sunday`s incidents took the overall death toll in the past two months to 30.
In the town of Pampore, around 13 kilometres (eight miles) south of Srinagar, police said they had opened fire on a large crowd of demonstrators after baton charges and teargas rounds failed to disperse them.
Two young men and a 17-year-old woman were shot dead.
Police said the protesters had blocked a main highway and attacked the security forces. Local residents said the demonstration had been vocal but peaceful.
The fatal shootings fuelled further protests in the nearby village of Khrew, where a crowd attacked a police station, forcing the officers inside to flee.
They then set fire to the ransacked building. The flames set off a cache of explosives in a series of blasts that demolished most of the station house, a senior local police officer told AFP by telephone.
At least four of the protesters were killed, the officer said, adding that more bodies might be buried under the rubble.
The recent unrest is the worst for two years in Indian Kashmir, where a 20-year separatist insurgency against Indian rule has claimed thousands of lives.
Twelve people have been killed in clashes with security forces in the past three days alone.
On Friday and Saturday five protesters were killed in the northern district of Baramulla, a traditional hotbed of Muslim separatism in the valley.
Last week, the Kashmir state government ordered a judicial probe into the recent spate of police shootings. The inquiry will be led by two retired judges and has been tasked with submitting a report within three months.
Indian officials say Pakistan-backed hardline separatists are behind the unrest, but locals say its the spontaneous result of years of pent up frustration and anger over alleged abuses by police and paramilitary forces.
India and Pakistan each hold part of Kashmir but claim it in full. The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two wars over the region since independence in 1947.
Separatist politicians and Islamic militants in Indian Kashmir reject rule from New Delhi and want to carve out an independent state or merge with Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Decades of on-off political dialogue about the status of the disputed territory have made no tangible progress. High unemployment, especially among young people, has fuelled local frustrations.
BDST: 0959 HRS, August 02, 2010
