10 with six civilians Killed in Kashmir Violence
Pakistan Times Kashmir Desk

SRINAGAR (India held-Kashmir): Ten freedom fighters including a leading leader and six civilians were killed in the latest violence in India held-Kashmir, police said Sunday.

Armed police backed by paramilitary forces shot dead a divisional commander of the region's dominant Hizbul Mujahedin group overnight in IHK's summer capital Srinagar, police said.

Officials identified the slain activist as Javed Sheikh, saying he had been active since the start of the struggle against Indian rule in 1989 by the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who are demanding their birth right of self-determination, as pledged with them by the United nations.

Perspective

By now, more than 100,000 people have died in the freedom struggle movement in 1989, in addition almost a million Kashmiris who were forced to migrate temporarily from the Himalyan State due to atrocious and nasty wave of atrocities, unleashed by the India-backed last ruler of the Jammu and Kashmir State, Dogra Hari Singh, who was rejected by the people with one-voice in 1947 with a vow to determine their future themselves, a reality which was subsequently endorsed by the United Nations through its resolutions for more than a dozen time [1948-1957]. Yet the people, predominantly Muslims still remain caged with the deployment of almost a million Indian troops in the forcibly occupied part of the State.

Rajouri Incident

Four more died in a separate gunbattle with Indian troops Sunday in the district of Rajouri, a police spokesman said, adding two force personnel were injured during the fighting.

Indian troops shot dead five more guerrillas in three separate clashes in southern Poonch and Pulwama districts overnight, police said.

Booby-trap

In other violence, two sisters in their twenties were killed and a third injured by a booby-trap affixed by Indian troops in the garden of their home near Kulgam, 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Srinagar.

"It was lying under stones on their lawn. And once they started removing the stones it went off," a police spokesman said, adding that freedom fighters were
suspected for the attack.

Man Shot Dead

A 56-year-old Muslim civilian was shot dead by troops in the southern district of Doda while two Muslim women and a middle-aged man were also killed in the districts of Rajouri, Poonch and Anantnag, police said Sunday.

None of Kashmir's dozen groups have claimed responsibility for the deaths.

The fresh episodes of violance due to human right violations by the Indian troops in occupied Kashmir has escalated recently despite a dialogue launched in January between India and Pakistan aimed at ending their nearly six-decades-old dispute over the future of the Himalayan region.●