SRINAGAR: Hundreds of angry villagers clashed with police in India-held Kashmir on Tuesday following suspicions that security personnel shot dead seven civilians they mistook for militants, a police officer and a witness said.

The villagers torched a police station in the forested Kupwara region near the de facto border with Pakistan and asked the security forces to hand over the bodies for identification and for burial, the officer said.

“Police fired tear gas and warning shots in the air to disperse the angry crowd who were hurling rocks at them,” the officer said on condition of anonymity.

A local resident, Manzoor Ahmed, said by phone a bullet wounded one villager before paramilitary reinforcements were called in to control the situation.

He said villagers suspected that the seven killed late on Monday were locals rather than militants who had infiltrated from across the border.

The situation was defused when police gave the bodies to a local religious group for burial, which was attended by hundreds of the villagers.

“After ascertaining that none of them were locals the bodies have been buried,” senior police officer J.P. Singh told reporters, adding that 15 people were injured in the clashes.

The army said the seven suspected militants were shot dead in the remote village of Dardpora, 140km from the main city of Srinagar, during a joint operation with police.

Lieutenant General S.K. Saini told reporters in Kupwara: “There is no civilian in the group of terrorists that has been eliminated.”

Despite the reassurances, separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani called for a general strike in the region on Friday in protest against what he called the mysterious killings.

The incident must be probed by an independent international body, he said.

About a dozen militant groups have been fighting Indian forces since 1989 for independence or for merger of the territory with Pakistan. The fighting has left tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, dead.—AFP