SRINAGAR, Feb 7 (2001) – Authorities in the troubled north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir lifted on Wednesday a curfew imposed on its summer capital, Srinagar, after the killing of six Sikhs last week, officials said.
The curfew was imposed on most parts of Srinagar and the state’s winter capital, Jammu, on Saturday night after unidentified gunmen shot dead six Kashmiri Sikhs and wounded five others. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
“We decided to lift the curfew in Srinagar after an improvement in the situation,” an official spokesman said.
The curfew was also relaxed for several hours in Jammu on Wednesday, the spokesman told Reuters.
Tensions had been running high since one person was killed and several others wounded in Jammu on Monday after police opened fire on Sikh protesters defying the curfew.
Saturday’s attack was the second on Kashmiri Sikhs since a separatist rebellion broke out in the disputed Himalayan region in 1990.
Last March, 35 Sikhs were shot dead by unidentified gunmen when then U.S. President Bill Clinton began an official visit to India.
Meanwhile, two Indian soldiers were wounded on Wednesday in a grenade attack by suspected separatist guerillas in south Kashmir, police said.
Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi’s rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state where officials say more than 30,000 people have been killed in 11 years of rebellion.
