At least four more protesters were killed and over a dozen others injured in firing by the security forces across the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday, while a youth injured earlier in shooting at Krew township died in a Srinagar hospital. With this, the death toll has risen to 27 in the past five days.
While irate mobs continued with their acts of arson, targeting mainly government and police installations, police jeeps criss-crossed Srinagar Tuesday afternoon making announcements that the security forces had been issued shoot-at-sight orders.
Following chief minister Omar Abdullah’s request to the Centre for help on Monday, Central paramilitary reinforcements started arriving here from different parts of the Jammu region and also from outside the state. The Army has, meanwhile, secured a 100-km stretch of the Jammu-Srinagar highway from Banihal to Srinagar, and also the Srinagar-Baltal portion of the road to eastern Ladakh.
Official sources here said almost 2,000 CRPF personnel were on the way to Srinagar while another 3,200 now based in Jammu areas were being redeployed in Valley districts. The Army is also helping the CRPF to maintain order in border districts like Bandipore, Kupwara and Baramulla, reports said. Defence sources here said this was also to protect Army convoys moving in these areas.
Thousands of residents, including women and children, continued to defy curfew and stage sit-ins in central Srinagar. At first the police and CRPF personnel tried to stop them, but when the crowds began to swell, they withdrew from Khanyar, Nowhatta, Gojwara, Rajouri Kadal, Nallah Mar Road Fateh Kadal, Kaka Sarai and some other neighbourhoods. At Khanyar, a CRPF jawan was seized by a mob and beaten up badly, witnesses said.
Several thousands attended the funerals of two youth slain earlier in the Qamarwari and Narwara localities. Large crowds defied the curfew elsewhere too, including in Baramulla, Bandipore, Kupwara, Anantnag, Pulwama and Budgam districts, clashing with the security forces at some places.
At Trehgam in Kupwara district, a mob demolished a CRPF pillbox and set fire to uniforms of local policemen found close to their camp. At Tangmarg, in neighbouring Baramulla, state agriculture minister Ghulam Hassan Mir’s house was pelted with stones and attempts made to torch it, but his security guards fired in the air to chase the mob away.
Separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who had said he would lead a “peaceful” march to the Idgah “martyrs” cemetery from a city hospital to offer prayers for those killed in the latest cycle of violence, was arrested.