Police kill two in Kashmir merchant protest march

Sopore Two people were killed and dozens injured in Sopore on Monday when security forces fired at a group of fruit merchants who were trying to march across the Line of Control, the de facto India-Pakistan border, as high tension prevailed in the Kashmir valley.

Thousands of fruit growers and people, alleging "economic blockade" by protesters in Jammu over the Amarnath land row, gathered in this apple trade centre and at many places of the valley to walk over to Pakistan-administered Kashmir through the Srinagar-Uri-Muzaffarabad highway.

Authorities imposed curfew in a Baramulla village to stop the relentless demonstrators from marching ahead.

The police and the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force tried to stop a procession near the Sopore-Sangrama crossing, 45 kilometres from the state's summer capital Srinagar, on the highway in Baramulla district.

The forces, according to police sources, used batons and tear smoke shells to disperse the marchers before opening fire. Two protesters were killed and four injured in the paramilitary firing, police said

The situation turned more volatile when the protesters carried the bodies of the dead youth on their shoulder in the march to Pakistan-administered Kashmir capital Muzaffarabad. Tension further escalated in Sopore town when the police fired at another mob.

Six weeks of tensions

• The march by the fruit merchants follows the nearly-six-week-long violent campaign over 40 hectares of forest land, earlier marked for the Amarnath shrine board.
• The issue has created a communal wedge between the Muslim-dominated Kashmir valley and the Hindu-majority Jammu region.
• The agitation has rocked Jammu and Kashmir and had claimed at least 15 lives before yesterday's more deaths.
• Violent demonstrations on the Jammu-Srinagar highway had caused disruption in the supply of medicines, food items and other commodities.