Seven civilians were killed as troops fired on protesters yesterday after a gunfight left three armed rebels and a soldier dead in Jammu and Kashmir, police and hospital officials said.
The fighting erupted soon after troops laid siege to a house in the southern Pulwama area where the militants were hiding, a police officer said.
Three armed militants - including a former soldier who had joined the rebels - then jumped out of the house into an orchard to fight the soldiers and were killed.
The fighting also left a soldier of the army dead, senior police officer Swayam Prakash Pani said.
While the gunfight was in progress, hundreds of villagers poured out on to the streets in freezing cold and marched towards the orchard, shouting slogans in support of the militants and throwing stones at the troops, witnesses said.
“It was mayhem. Six protesters died in the ensuing firing by soldiers,” a police officer said.
Hospital officials said a seventh man died later of gunshot wounds.
Dozens of protestors were also injured in the clashes with government forces, another police officer said.
Authorities suspended mobile Internet services in many areas of the state, including in the main city of Srinagar.
A large number of students also held protests against the killings.
Protests spread to the old quarters of Srinagar and the northwestern town of Sopore.
Yesterday’s bloodshed capped the deadliest year in the state since 2009, with nearly 550 killed so far including some 150 civilians, according to a monitoring group.
Security officials say some 230 militants have been killed this year, most of them locals from the Kashmir Valley, but rebel groups have recruited new members at a matching pace.
Popular support for the rebels and their cause has increased since the killing of a charismatic militant leader in 2016.
Villagers, sometimes in their thousands, have been swarming sites of gun battles with government forces to help militants escape from military cordons.
Separatists opposed to Indian rule of Kashmir called for a three-day general strike to protest yesterday’s killings and announced a march tomorrow to the military headquarters in Srinagar.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a senior member of the unified Joint Resistance Leadership group, took to Twitter to vent anger at government action, saying the Indian forces should “kill all of us at one time rather than killing us daily”.
“There is no explanation for this excessive use of force, none whatsoever. This is a massacre & that’s the only way to describe it,” former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah said in a Twitter post.
He slammed Governor Satya Pal Malik’s administration for its alleged failure to ensure that civilian casualties are avoided during gunfights.
“The administration of Governor Malik has one task and one task only - to focus on the security of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and restore peace to a troubled valley. Sadly, it appears that’s the only thing the administration is not doing. Publicity campaigns and full page ads don’t bring peace,” he said.
Another former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti also expressed serious concern
over the day’s incident.
“How long are we going to shoulder the coffins of our youngsters? So many civilians killed today post encounter in Pulwama. No country can win a war by killing its own people. I strongly condemn these killings, and once again appeal for efforts to stop this bloodbath,” she said in a statement.
Soldiers walk near the site of a gunbattle between militants and government forces in Sirnoo Pulwama, south of Srinagar, yesterday.
