SRINAGAR, Sept 8: Shops, schools and businesses were closed on Thursday in Kashmir’s main city Srinagar in response to a strike call to protest against the arrest of women separatists.
The strike left streets largely deserted barring armoured security vehicles and police foot patrols.
The shutdown came as Muslim militants and troops exchanged fire near a heavily guarded building in Srinagar housing the offices of the chief minister of Kashmir.
Police said two militants and two policemen were killed in the gunbattle which began on Wednesday. Three other policemen were wounded in the firefight, which ended on Thursday after the second militant was killed.
Thursday’s strike was in protest against the arrest of Asiya Andrabi, the chief of Dukhtaran-i-Milat, who was arrested last week for raiding hotels, restaurants and wine shops to stamp out the “flesh trade” and check what the group called the “moral decline” in the Muslim-majority region.
On Tuesday, authorities charged Andrabi, who wears a head-to-toe black veil, and seven followers under a tough public safety law, drawing condemnation from Kashmiri separatist groups.
Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the chief of the hardline faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, called the strike.
“The detention of Asiya Andrabi and her activists is a heinous crime, a shameful act. Their crime is that they raised a voice against evils in society,” Geelani said in a statement.
FIVE KILLED: Meanwhile, a Kashmiri militant and a policeman were killed in a clash in held Kashmir’s main city while suspected rebels killed three Muslims elsewhere in the state on Thursday, police said.
The militant had been hiding in a house in Srinagar since taking part in an attack the previous day that injured one policeman and killed an insurgent near the city’s central secretariat.
“We traced him this morning and asked him to surrender,” a police officer said. “He instead opened fire and hurled grenades that left a policeman dead and three other security force personnel injured.”
Police said in Wednesday’s attack two militants on a motorcycle had fired on police and had tried to storm a security force camp near the heavily guarded secretariat that houses the offices of top state officials.
The officer said police were trying to identify the two rebels killed on Wednesday and Thursday.
Three hardline rebel groups — Harkat, Jaish-e-Mohammed and al Mansurain — claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s incident, saying it was a joint operation against police, the local news agency Current News Service said.
A Muslim civilian was killed and eight others injured in a grenade explosion in the northern town of Sopore on Thursday, police said.—Agencies
Dear visitor, the comments section is undergoing an overhaul and will return soon.