May 09, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 3, 1429

SRINAGAR, May 8: Four Kashmiri men had to be rescued from a fast-flowing icy river on Thursday after they jumped in to protest a lack of jobs, police said. “All the four were rescued by policemen and locals living in houseboats,” police officer Pervez Ahmed told AFP. They were hospitalised, he added.

The four were part of a protest by dozens of unemployed educated youth who marched through the streets of occupied Srinagar, hub of an insurgency that began in 1989.

There are more than 300,000 unemployed graduates in occupied Kashmir. Government jobs are scarce and companies stay out of the region despite a sharp fall in violence since a peace process between India and Pakistan was launched in 2004.

—AFP