Violence in the Valley continued on Sunday as four people were killed in a fresh round of police firings. The doctors said they were also treating ten persons with gunshot wounds. Another 20 injured in police firings have been admitted to Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences here and other hospitals. Police and hospital sources said that over 150 people were wounded in clashes with the security forces across the Valley on Sunday whereas scores of security personnel including one SSP and one SP, two Dy SPs, a Station House Officer and one Commanding Officer of the CRPF also sustained injuries in rock-throwing incidents and other incidents of mob violence.
At the time of filing this report, huge curfew-defying crowds were out on the streets in Srinagar and several other towns and the mob violence continued. Riot police and CRPF personnel were trying to control the situation using live ammunition resulting into more casualties. Chief minister Omar Abdullah has closeted with senior Cabinet colleagues and top functionaries of the government and security officials to discuss the crisis. He is also reported to be in touch with the Central government authorities and also called up Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to apprise him on the law and order situation in the Valley which is deteriorating by the day.
The latest rounds of police firing took place at Pampore, a highway town outside capital Srinagar, killing four protesters and wounding several others on Sunday, as authorities struggled to rein in protesters defying a strict curfew that was imposed on all major towns in the Kashmir Valley on Saturday. With the latest killing, the toll has risen to ten in three days and to 30 in past seven weeks.
Witnesses said that police opened fire to break up protests at Pampore as hundreds of residents who had blocked the Srinagar-Jammu highway at a number of places refused to disperse even after cops burst several teargas canisters into and resorted to aerial firing.
A police handout issued here in the evening said that irate mobs not only blocked the highway by erecting barricades from Pantha Chowk to Pampore but also set the office-cum-residence of the area Tehsildar and a police vehicle to fire besides damaging a number of other police vehicles. “Miscreants also snatched weapons from the local Court Guard, resorted to heavy stone pelting on the local police station and the deployments. Even some unidentified militant fired upon the security force from amongst them,” the state said. It added that police and the security forces resorted to cane-charge and also used tear smoke shells to quell the mobs but they did not relent forcing the security forces to open fire. However, witnesses said that the police and government properties were attacked by irate mobs only in reprisal to the killings in police and CRPF firing. Those killed have identified as Nayeem Ahmad Shah and Rayees Ahmed Shah.
The killings triggered protests at neighbouring Khrew and Samboora where a 17-year-old girl Afroza and Reyaz Ahmed, 22, were killed and more than twenty injured in police firings and other actions. Reports of mob violence and acts of arson continue to pour in from the area and elsewhere in the Valley.