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Two Killed as Police Fire on Mourners in Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 3 (News Agencies) - Two people, including a young boy, were killed and nine people injured Friday when Indian occupying forces began to shoot at thousands of mourners in Indian Kashmir, where 14 other people were also killed in separatist-linked violence.
Eyewitnesses said Indian forces opened fire on around 20,000 mourners as they were returning from a prayer ceremony for three activists killed on Monday during a mosque siege in the village of Goigam, 25 miles north of Srinagar.
The shooting took place at Magam township, 19 miles north of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital.
An Indian border guard spokesman said the initial gunfire had come from the mourners, but local residents insisted the security forces had acted without provocation.
Eighteen people were hospitalized with injuries, and of the two who were killed, one was a 12-year-old boy.
Five of the injured were in serious condition, doctors said.
A senior police officer said the crowd had thrown stones at an army convoy, provoking the troops on duty.
Earlier Friday, two suspected Muslim activists were killed when a landmine they were laying exploded near Tral township, 25 miles south of Srinagar.
"The two were burying the landmine in the soil, when it went off," a police spokesman said. "Their bodies were completely blown apart."
Police said the mine had apparently been targeted at security convoys regularly using a main road in the area.
Following the explosion, Kashmiri activists launched attacks against security posts around Tral. A schoolteacher was killed in the exchange of fire, which lasted for about four hours.
Four more civilians, including two women, were also injured.
"The firing sparked terror in the township," resident Abdul Ahad told the French news agency AFP over the phone. "We didn't even venture out to offer Friday prayers," he added.
Elsewhere in Indian-held Kashmir, four Muslim activists were killed in a fierce encounter with Indian forces at Dadwan village in the northern frontier district of Kupwara.
Also, three civilians, including a woman, were killed and four others injured during exchanges of fire between activists and Indian forces in remote Hakwas forests in the southern Kashmir district of Anantnag on Friday, police said.
Four more deaths were reported elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference (APHC - Kashmir's main alliance), Abdul Gani Bhat, and the former chairman, Syed Ali Geelani, was put under house arrest Friday afternoon, an alliance statement said.
The statement said the house arrests were ordered to prevent Bhat and Geelani from taking part in prayer ceremonies for the activists killed in the Goigam mosque siege.
Police termed the action against the two separatist leaders as "precautionary."
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