SRINAGAR, Feb 10 (2006) – Ten people including five policemen, were injured in Indian Kashmir on Friday when Muslim protesters clashed with police as trouble flared over charges that Buddhists had desecrated the Koran, authorities said.
A curfew was imposed in the towns of Kargil and Leh in Kashmir’s Buddhist-dominated Ladakh region, for the second day in Leh.
The clashes erupted on Wednesday after torn pages of the Koran were found scattered by the road in Leh, police said. Leh is about 435 km (270 miles) east of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.
Several houses and cars were burnt in the violence, but no injuries were reported.
On Friday, 10 people, including five policemen, were injured when Muslim protesters clashed with police in Kargil, police said.
They said a curfew was imposed in Kargil after protesters ransacked a government office, set fire to the house of a police officer and hurled stones at police and government buildings.
Muslims alleged Buddhists were responsible for the alleged desecration, but police said they were investigating the incident.
Over two dozen people have been detained for questioning by police, and authorities have called for a meeting of Buddhist priests and Muslim clerics.
“We are trying to calm tensions down and security has been beefed up across the district,” senior police officer K. Rajindra said.
Jammu and Kashmir has a sizeable Buddhist minority in Ladakh and a majority Hindu population in the Jammu region, neither of which supports the separatist revolt by Muslim militants against New Delhi’s rule in the rest of the state.
