Indian troops kill Kashmir protesters

Indian forces opened fire on thousands of protesters in parts of Southern Indian-administered Kashmir, killing at least 15 civilians and wounding scores of others during a mass funeral for a slain rebel fighter.

A man and eight protesters were killed, while six injured civilians died too overnight as hundreds of people clashed with troops in Southern Pulwama town.

Clashes with police and paramilitary erupted as tens of thousands of people paid homage to Burhan Wani, the rebel fighter and so-called poster boy of the new Kashmiri resistance who had been shot dead by security forces and police in Bumdoora village, 85 km South of Srinagar.

Thousands of residents hurled rocks at Indian troops who responded by using live ammunition, pellet guns, and tear gas as the news of the killing spread across the valley, officials said.

As many tried to vent their anger on the streets, street clashes also spread to Srinagar, the capital of the Indian-administered Kashmir.

Earlier, armed police and paramilitary soldiers erected steel barricades on the streets, laid razor wire, and warned residents to stay indoors.

Over the last five years, Wani had become the iconic face of Kashmiri resistance. The latter’s killing was the “biggest success against militants” in recent years, said Inspector-General Syed Javaid Mutjaba Gillani.

Khurram Parvez, programme director of Jammu Kashmir Coalition for Civil Society (JKCCS) in Srinagar, saw Wani’s death as extra-judicial, and said the Indian government had made no attempt to arrest him.

“He joined because he was humiliated on the streets, his brother was torutured, this is where his resentment for the Indian government came from, and this is why Kashmiri’s identified with him”, Parvez said, remarking that Wani was an example of a rebel who had not joined out of ideological reasons.

Fearing that the killing could lead to violent protests in the already troubled region, Indian officials suspended an annual Hindu pilgrimage to a mountain cave which draws about half a million people each year. Officials also suspended cell-phone services in Southern parts of Kashmir and blocked mobile internet in the rest of the region.

Most Kashmir locals support rebel demands for an independent Kashmir or a merging with Pakistan, and have long resented the Indian presence.

In the uprising and the subsequent Indian military crackdown in Indian administered Kashmir, more than 68,000 people have been killed.