At least two people were killed in grenade attacks in Jammu and Kashmir yesterday and two militants shot dead by security forces, officials said, in one of the region’s most violent days since New Delhi imposed a security clampdown.
The government shut down Internet and phone lines and flooded the Muslim-majority region with security forces to back its August 5 move to strip Kashmir of its autonomous status and impose tighter central control.
Amid heightened tensions, suspected militants staged two grenade attacks yesterday, a top police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
One was thrown at a group of village councillors and government officials waiting outside an administration building in the village of Hakura, south of the main city of Srinagar.
The police official said two people were killed and at least four injured.
The second grenade was lobbed into a store next to an entrance to the University of Kashmir in Srinagar, injuring three people, the official added.
The attacks were the worst on one day since the clampdown – which has been gradually eased by India – started.
A grenade attack in early November killed one person.
The government has insisted that “normalcy” is returning to Kashmir, but locals are still cut off from the Internet and dozens of political leaders remain in detention.
Food shops are only open for a few hours each day and no public buses and taxis have operated since the clampdown.
Protests are held regularly.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government on October 31 turned the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir into two federally-controlled territories, arguing that special provisions for the region had hindered its development and fuelled separatism.
But the move has been opposed in areas of Jammu and Kashmir.
A military spokesman said two rebels were killed in a siege in the Pulwama district on Monday and yesterday.
Media reports said both were Kashmiris.
Kashmir’s special status had previously prevented people from outside the region from buying land or getting government jobs there.
Security personnel stand near the site of a grenade blast as residents walk on a roadside at a marketplace outside the campus of Kashmir’s main university in Srinagar yesterday.
