Srinagar, Aug 19 (IANS) Over two dozen people including five security men were injured in clashes between curfew-defying mobs and security forces across Kashmir Thursday. An eight-old-boy, accidentally injured in police firing, died in hospital, taking to 60 the toll in the unrest since June 11.
Life remained paralysed with shops, other businesses, educational institutions, banks, post offices closed and public transport off the roads due to a shutdown called by the separatist Hurriyat group headed by Syed Ali Geelani.
To counter the separatist-called protests, authorities had imposed curfew in Srinagar and north Kashmir’s Sopore town while strict restrictions remained in place in Baramulla, Handwara, Kupwara and Pulwama towns.
A mob pelted stones at Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) bunker in Soura area of Srinagar.
‘As the mob could not be controlled by baton charges and tear smoke canisters, the CRPF personnel fired, injuring seven people including three including two women – with bullet injuries,’ police here said.
The two injured women have been identified as Sumeera and Fatima and the man as Habibullah Tiploo.
All the three were taken to the nearby Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences Soura (SKIMS) where doctors operated upon Sumeera whose condition is still stated to be critical as she sustained a bullet injury in the chest, attending doctors at SKIMS said.
In Rainwari area of the city, a large number defied curfew to stage sit-ins and protests. Security forces did not intervene in the area.
In Sopore, a mob defied curfew and pelted stones on the security forces.
Police said after normal crowd control measures failed, the security forces had to use rubber bullets in which four protesters sustained injuries. Doctors described the condition of all the four as out of danger.
Earlier in the day, eight-year-old Milat Ahmad Dar succumbed to injuries in SKIMS where he had been admitted on last Saturday in a critical condition.
Reports here said the boy was playing with his friends in Harnagh village when a bullet fired by security men in the air to disperse a mob which had attacked two of their vehicles Aug 14 hit him.
‘The boy was not part of the protesting mob at all. He had come to his mother’s ancestral Harnagh village from Wanpora village near Koimoh town in Kulgam district. The bullet was fired somewhere else and it claimed an innocent’s life somewhere else. This is the tragedy of Kashmiri people’, said a sobbing villager in Harnagh who did not want to be named.
The death of the boy evoked widespread anger in south Kashmir and authorities had to enforce strict curfew restrictions in Koimoh, Anantnag, Kulgam and Pulwama areas.
