SRINAGAR: Indian government forces killed two militants who tried to snatch a guard’s rifle in disputed Kashmir, police alleged in a statement on Friday.

As word of the killings spread, protests against Indian rule and clashes erupted in the region.

At least two men were trapped overnight in a home on the outskirts of Srinagar after they tried to take the rifle from an officer guarding a local leader of India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, police said, adding that the officer was wounded.

Counterinsurgency police and soldiers cordoned off the neighbourhood and killed the two men in the exchange of gunfire that followed, they claimed.

The slain men were from neighbouring Pulwama district, where officials ordered schools and colleges to be closed on Friday in an attempt to stop student protests.

Protests and clashes occurred separately in another village north of Srinagar after authorities sealed it on a tip that some suspected militants were hiding there.

Police said a brief gun battle followed, but at least two militants escaped during the severe clashes between rock-throwing protesters and government forces using tear gas. No casualties were immediately reported.

Since 1989, militant groups have been fighting roughly half a million Indian soldiers deployed in the disputed region, seeking independence for the former Himalayan kingdom or its merger with Pakistan. 

The fighting and the subsequent Indian crackdown has left tens of thousands, mostly civilians, dead.

Last year 206 suspected militants, 57 civilians and 78 Indian security forces personnel were killed, making it the deadliest year in a decade.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2018