Violence in Kashmir valley erupts again, over 30 injured as securitymen, police clash

Srinagar: More than 30 people, most of them policemen, were injured as parts of Srinagar and Tral, a township about 42-km south from here, erupted again on Friday afternoon when irate crowds clashed with riot police at several places, forcing the latter to fire warning shots, teargas and cane-charge.

Srinagar’s Nowhatta area witnessed street battles between stone-hurling youth and police for hours after the Friday congregation at nearby Grand Mosque. Police used force including tear-smoke canisters to push the surging crowds back but in vain, witnesses said.

A police statement said that 21 of its men including a Station House Officer and three civilians were injured in the clashes reported from Nowhatta, Gojwara, Malarata and Khawaja Bazaar areas of the city.

“However, the situation by and large remained peaceful in the Valley,” it said. Earlier Kashmir’s chief Muslim cleric and chairman of his faction of Hurriyat Conference Mirwaiz Umar Farooq led a protest procession within the premises of the Jama Masjid against the killing of a local youth by Army during an operations against militants in Tral’s Kamla woods on April 13 and other alleged human rights violations by the security forces.

He termed the youth’s killing as “extrajudicial murder” and demanded immediate revocation of Afspa and other “draconian laws”, release of political prisoners, and bringing to justice the Army personnel involved in the killing of Tral youth.