A young man was killed and two other people were wounded when Indian army fired at the funeral of a Kashmiri fighter in the occupied valley on Saturday, police and residents said, as seven fighters and an Indian soldier were killed in gunbattles in the region.
Soldiers descended on a village in the suburbs of southern Shopian town as thousands gathered to participate in the funeral of a fighter killed along with four others in a gunbattle with government forces in a neighbouring village early Saturday, said police officer SP Vaid.
Locals said clashes erupted after soldiers fired live ammunition at the funeral procession, killing one person. Two others were wounded.
Earlier, army soldiers and counterinsurgency police cordoned off a neighbourhood in the suburbs of southern Shopian town overnight, leading to an exchange of fire with fighters, police said. One militant was killed overnight while four more died early Saturday.
The fighting sparked protests and clashes as hundreds of residents tried to march to the site of the battle to help the militants escape. Government forces fired warning shots, shotgun pellets and tear gas at the stone-throwing protesters, injuring at least 15 people, three of them critically.
Separately, two fighters and a soldier were killed in the northwestern Sopore area on Friday, authorities said.
Meanwhile, security guards posted at the residence of Farooq Abdullah, a member of India’s Parliament and Kashmir’s former top elected official, shot and killed a young man after he allegedly forced his entry into the residence on Saturday, Vaid said. He said the man traveling in a car was unarmed and gate-crashed into the residence in southern Jammu city. He scuffled with security guards before he was shot to death.
Abdullah was not at the residence.
The slain man’s family rejected the police version of the incident, saying that the residence was not on his route to the gym where he had gone in the morning. They sought an independent probe. There was no independent account of the shooting.
Published in Daily Times, August 5th 2018.
