7 more slain in valley, Omar for political fix

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The Kashmir Valley experienced another day of mayhem on Monday with at least seven protesters gunned down by police and paramilitary personnel struggling to contain protests and mob violence which have spread to new areas.

About 20 people sustained bullet wounds and many more were injured in daylong street clashes with the security forces, reports from various parts of the Valley said. Protests by huge curfew-defying crowds, however, continued almost everywhere in the Valley. Overnight and during the day on Monday, rebellious music, songs and slogans reverberated from mosque loudspeakers, reminiscent of the situation witnessed in early 1990 when militancy erupted in Kashmir. Almost the entire Valley has been reeling under nonstop curfew since Friday.
Tariq Ahmed Dar, a youth critically injured in police firing in the southern town of Bijbehara on Saturday, died in a Srinagar hospital early Monday, raising the toll of the past four days to 22 and to 48 in the seven-week-old unrest triggered by the death of teenage Srinagar student Tufail Ahmed Mattoo after he was hit in the head by a police teargas shell.
Several hundred local policemen and CRPF personnel have been injured in rock-throwing incidents and mob violence, 39 of them on Monday itself. Rampaging mobs on Monday also attacked government buildings, police stations and camps and a railway station in the districts of Budgam, Kupwara, Pulwama and Kulgam. At Kokernag, the local office of the Congress party was ransacked by an irate crowd, reports said.
The deteriorating law and order situation was disussed threadbare at an emergency Unified Command meeting here Monday evening. The meeting was called by chief minister Omar Abdullah soon after he returned from New Delhi after holding meetings with the Prime Minister and the Union home minister. “The meeting took stock of the prevailing law and order situation in the Valley and also reviewed the measures in place to handle the situation and restore normalcy,” an official spokesperson here said, adding that the top brass of the Army, Central paramilitary forces, J&K police, Intelligence Bureau and civil administration attended.
At Sangam, along the Srinagar-Jammu highway, the CRPF opened fire to quell a protest mob which, despite being issued a warning, came onto a vital bridge spanning a Jhelum tributary guarded by a paramilitary team, killing one person. While witnesses alleged that the youth, Bashir Ahmed Ganai, was seized by CRPF personnel and beaten to death, a police handout issued here Monday evening said he died in a stampede caused when an unruly mob was being chased away.
At Kraqlpora in Kupwara, pro-freedom protests culminated in a mob allegedly trying to overrun a camp of the counter-insurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) but was fired upon by policemen, resulting in the death of one person on the spot. The victim was later identified as Khursheed Ahmed Mir (22). Of the five others injured, one died later in a Srinagar hospital. The police said the mob stormed the camp and, apart from ransacking it, “snatched” four rifles.
In Pulwama, violent mobs set ablaze the Rajpora police station and the Kakapora police post. The police opened fire at Kakapora, killing Muhammad Yakub Butt (22). Locals claimed the victim was a Hafiz-e-Quran (a person who has memorised the holy Quran) and was not part of any procession but had been emerging from a local mosque when targeted with gunfire.
Violence also erupted at two places — Qoimoh and Chawalgam — in southern Kulgam district during which a police post was attacked by a mob. In police firing one protester, Ashique Hussein Butt, a Class 9 student, was killed, reports said. In the evening, the CRPF opened fire in main Kulgam town, killing Rameez Ahmed (16) and injuring three persons, one of then seriously.
In the central district of Budgam, irate mobs attacked the office of the chief medical officer, that of the area tehsildar, a horticulture department building, a railway station, and torched one of the huts within and a train coach. The Budgam police station also came under heavy stone-pelting.
A police handout said, “At the scenes of these occurrences, the security forces had to fire in which four persons lost their lives. 67 persons got injured in these incidents, including nine civilians, 39 policemen, including a SDPO, and 28 CRPF jawans.”
The CRPF opened fire on Monday evening to quell a protest at Sheikh Dawood Colony in the Srinagar suburb of Batamaloo, killing nine-year-old Sameer Ahmed. Four persons were injured in police firing on a protest procession heading for the district headquarters of Bandipore at Ajas, on the outskirts of the town, reports said. Unconfirmed reports said one of the injured persons died later. The police and CRPF opened fire and burst teargas canisters to quell mobs at Doora, Bonagam (Shopian) and Paibug in Anantnag district, injuring 11 protesters.