Youths defied a curfew to rally in the streets as paramilitary troops and police in riot gear patrolled villages and towns in Kashmir after the death of Burhan Wani.
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The restrictions will remain in force even today in most areas of Srinagar city and four districts of Kashmir as a precautionary measure, officials said.
Earlier during the daily briefing on Monday, Ban’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the reports of the clashes in Kashmir, in which about 23 people have been killed so far and over 250 injured, “are of concern to us”.
Burhan, who was Hizb’s Kashmir chief and carrying a cash reward of Rs 10 lakhs, was killed in an encounter with security forces in Kokernag area of South Kashmir’s Anantnag district on Friday last.
The foreign secretary said that healthy relations between India and Pakistan are indispensable for long-term peace in the region, and old disputes are needed to be resolved for that.
A Kashmir police personnel was also killed during protests with unruly mob in Anantang on Sunday. Intermittent clashes were reported from different parts of the Valley in the morning.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over control of Kashmir, since they won independence from British colonialists in 1947.
As the anger in Kashmir simmered, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called for a plebiscite in the “occupied” Jammu and Kashmir.
Troops used live ammunition and pellet guns to try and quell the angry, rock-throwing crowds that gathered across the region in defiance of a curfew imposed by Indian authorities.
“It is shocking and painful that Indian armed forces have yet again unleashed terror on the mourners and protesters, resulting in massive civilian casualties”, Khurram Parvez, an activist with rights group the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition for Civil Society, said in a statement.
On the Indian side, numerous 12 million residents resent the Indian troop presence and back rebel demands for independence or a merger with neighboring Pakistan.
Activists and fighters of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) chant slogans during a protest against the killings in the Indian-administered Kashmir, in Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani-administered Kashmir, July 13, 2016.
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Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting since 1989.
