Scores injured in violent J& K clashes
It was not like any other day of ding- dong stonepelting street battles but a complete revulsion and virtual insurrection by surging crowds who kept police and paramilitary forces on their toes and in action whole day on Friday in Srinagar and many other places in the curfew- bound Kashmir Valley.
Scores were injured in the clashes that only intensified after the Juma Namaz was offered in mohalla ( locality) mosques. No weekly congregations were, however, allowed at major Muslim places of worship including Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid.
The injured included three boys in the 11- 17 age group shot at by troops while containing a violence mob at Gushe in frontier Kupwara district. All the three — Irshad Ahmed Butt, Faisal Nazir and Irfan Nanha — have been shot in their legs and are “stable”, the doctors said.
Another youth, Owais Aziz, was injured when hit by a teargas canister and two more in pellet gun firing at Kuligam Lolab, reports said.
The police admitted that till 5 pm as many as 70 incidents of intense stonepelting had been reported from different areas of the Valley and that a number of police and other security establishments and camps also came under mob attacks, leaving 48 personnel injured. It put the number of ‘ non- lethal’ casualties among the protesters at 8. However, hospital sources said that the number is between 60 and 70 including three with bullet wounds.
The police also said that militants tossed a hand grenade towards J& K police and CRPF personnels deployed for law and order duty in southern Shopian town but it did not explode and was later defused by the bomb disposal squad. At Rohama in Rafiabad, the north- western Baramulla district, a mob torched a government building. In another act of arson, a sheep husbandry department building at Shirmal in Shopian was also gutted.
The police reported that miscreants had placed obstructions on Beerwa road near Hardapanzu ( Baramulla district) to stop movement of traffic this evening.
“A motorcyclist identified as Abdul Ahad Ganie rammed into the obstruction, injuring him and his son Kamran, the pillionrider. The motorcyclist succumbed to his injuries later,” it said.
The protests broke out early on Friday and intensified in the afternoon even as the authorities reimposed curfew in most parts of the Valley at dawn to hold back a rally at Srinagar’s grand mosque.
Separatists had called for ‘ Jamia Masjid Chalo’ and asked the people to converge in large numbers at the historic place of worship in the heart of central Srinagar for a memorial service for over 50 people killed in security forces’ firings and other actions in their attempts to quell the ongoing unrest in the Valley during the past three weeks.
Reports said that the security forces fired hundreds of teargas canisters and exploded scores of stun grenades to quell protests and stone- throwing mobs.
At places, pellet guns were also used. A stun grenade, also known as a flash grenade, flashbang or soundbomb, is a nonlethal explosive device used to temporarily disorient the protesters’ senses.
The stun grenade contains a mercury and magnesium powder which, upon detonation, creates a blinding flash equivalent to 300,000 candlepower.