SRINAGAR, Feb 12 (1995) – A protest strike to mourn five civilians allegedly killed by Indian border guards paralysed this Kashmir city on Sunday, shutting shops and businesses and taking traffic off the streets.
The strike was accompanied by anti-Indian demonstrations in at least six suburbs of the city, the summer capital of the Himalayan state and urban hub of a Moslem insurgency.
Protestors took to the streets, chanting “we will spill blood for blood” and “we want freedom,” witnesses said.
No violence was reported during the demonstrations, which were staged as Indian security forces stepped up patrols.
The general strike was provoked by the alleged killings of five shopkeepers by incensed members of the Border Security Force in Srinagar on Friday after two troopers were killed in an ambush by Moslem gunmen.
Responsibility for the ambush was claimed by the pan-Islamic Harkat-ul-Ansar guerrilla group.
A fierce firefight on the edges of Charur Sharief village in central Kashmir, meanwhile, left three militants, two army soldiers and a civilian dead overnight Saturday-Sunday, the police said.
Kashmir state officials said they were planning a massive security operation in the area to flush out militants reportedly using the mausoleum of a 14th-century Moslem saint as a sanctuary.
Moslem guerrillas are fighting for an end to Indian rule over Kashmir, India’s only Moslem-majority state, in a five-year-old campaign which has cost more than 10,000 lives.
