"Kashmir Muslims protest road blockade by Hindus
SRINAGAR, India: Two people died and dozens were hurt after security forces fired warning shots and tear gas Monday in an attempt to prevent tens of thousands of Muslims marching toward Pakistan's portion of divided Kashmir to protest a road blockade by Hindus, police said.
At least 50 people were taken to a hospital with injuries caused by bullets and tear gas, including one who later died, said Asif Drabu, a doctor at a hospital in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Another man was killed when police opened fire on angry protesters who torched two police vehicles near Sangrama, a village on the highway that connects Indian Kashmir with the portion of the Himalayan region that is under Pakistan, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Police said four officers were injured when protesters hurled rocks at them in Sopore, another of the several towns from where protesters set out.
In Srinigar, large crowds pushed aside steel barricades set up by police and began walking toward the de facto border between the Indian and Pakistani portions of the Himalayan territory. An alliance of nonviolent groups seeking independence for the Indian portion of Muslim-majority Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan called the demonstrations to protest a blockade by Hindus of a key highway linking the Kashmir Valley with the rest of India.
Indian authorities placed two key separatist leaders under house arrest Sunday to prevent them from leading the demonstrations.
Kashmiri traders said police and paramilitary soldiers also seized dozens of fruit-laden trucks and deflated the tires of other vehicles which the protesters had planned to drive during the procession.
Traders have warned that Kashmir faces shortages of food and medicine because of the highway blockade, and complain that hundreds of truckloads of Kashmiri fruit are spoiling because they cannot be delivered.
The protests are the latest development in a political crisis that began in June with a dispute over land near a Hindu shrine and has boiled over into deadly rioting and rising animosity between Muslims and Hindus.
And CUI BONO, 'eh? Just drawing up those WWIII battle lines!
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Also see: Chaos in Kashmir
