Five persons were killed and about two dozen others wounded, three of them critically, when security forces opened fire to quell protesters in Jammu and Kashmir’s central district of Budgam and southern Anantnag on Tuesday.
With this, the death toll in the 39-day unrest in the Valley, triggered by the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin’s poster boy Burhan Muzzaffar Wani on July 8, has risen to 65. The slain include two policemen. In all, about 6,000 civilians and over 3,500 security personnel have been injured in the clashes.
The injured civilians include about 500 youths, some of them minors, who have been maimed on blinded by the use of pellet guns by security forces.
Summer capital Srinagar with other cities and towns of the Valley continued to be under curfew, while there was an official security clamp down on separatist-called shutdowns, bringing life to a standstill.
Sources say in Budgam, CRPF personnel opened fire on a group of protesters in the district’s Aerpathan village on Tuesday morning, killing four, identified as Javed Ahmad Nazar, Javed Ahmed Sheikh, Manzoor Ahmed Lone and Muhammad Ashraf Wani. Twelve others have been injured, two of them critically.
A local doctor, Muhammad Afzal, said the area was tense since Monday evening when, he alleged, the security forces descended on Aerpathan and eight surrounding hamlets and started thrashing civilians and damaging properties “merely because a group of youths booed at an officer”, who was driving through the area to participate in an Independence Day function at the district headquarters earlier during the day.
“A peaceful protest against atrocities was underway at Aerpathan when CRPF arrived on the spot and opened fire,” he said. However, police said that the “miscreants” threw stones at a CRPF vehicle and created “a life-threatening situation” for those on board.
Adding that the jawans opened fire in “self-defense”. Sources say intense protests were going on in Aerpathan for the past week, during which mosque loudspeakers reverberated with pro-azadi slogans and rebellious songs.
The security forces arrived in the village on Monday night and allegedly damaged windowpanes of residential houses, which sparked off protests.
The police and CRPF allegedly fired teargas canisters to curb the situation. On Tuesday, several people from Aerpathan and adjoining villages were out on the streets, protesting against the CRPF deployment and subsequent shooting incidents.
It is learnt that in Lorkipora area of Anantnag, a protester was killed and 10 others were injured in firing by the Army on Tuesday. ‘Forces kill 16-yr-old to avenge officer’ In Srinagar’s Batamallo area, locals alleged that 16-year-old Yasir Ahmed Sheikh was a victim of “target killing”, and that security forces apparently wanted to avenge the slaying of CRPF commandant Pramod Kumar in Nowhatta area on Monday.
