September 07, 2008	Sunday	Ramazan 06, 1429

SRINAGAR, Sept 6: One demonstrator was killed as protests erupted in occupied Kashmir and a day-long strike called by Muslim freedom-seekers brought the region to a standstill.

The 20-year-old man was killed when police fired rubber bullets and teargas at hundreds of stone-pelting demonstrators in Srinagar, doctors and residents said.

“The young man was killed when a rubber bullet lodged in his heart,” said Dr Wasim Ahmed at the city’s main hospital.

Angry demonstrators carried the body shoulder-high through the city centre shouting “We want freedom” and “Allah is great”, and went on a rampage, burning tyres and setting up roadblocks.

“They (Indians) have shot dead another innocent and unarmed protester. We’re not going to take this lying down,” the region’s leading moderate separatist politician, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, told AFP from his family compound in Srinagar where he was placed under house arrest on Friday.

“We will definitely call for more protests,” he said.

Since June, at least 40 Muslims and three Hindus have died in police shootings in the Kashmir valley and the mainly Hindu area of Jammu, as authorities have struggled to quell protests.

Saturday’s strike, which closed shops, schools, banks and offices in Srinagar, was one of a string of shutdowns and demonstrations called by leaders in the Muslim-majority Himalayan territory.

“The strike is to protest against India’s rule in Kashmir,” Farooq said.

There were similar shutdowns in other towns of the Kashmir valley, according to police and residents.

Farooq, who is also the region’s chief cleric, was put under house arrest along with two other top pro-liberation leaders, Syed Ali Geelani and Yasin Malik, as Indian forces struggled to contain protests.

Last week, authorities lifted a nine-day curfew — the longest to be imposed since the anti-India militancy was at its peak in the early 1990s — to coincide with the start of the holy month of Ramazan.—AFP