Shoot at sight in Kashmir

Four more protesters were killed and over a dozen others injured in firing by the security forces across the Kashmir Valley on Tuesday, while a youth injured earlier in shooting at Krew township died in a Srinagar hospital. The death toll has risen now to 27 in the past five days.

While irate mobs continued with their acts of arson, targeting mainly government and police installations, police jeeps criss-crossed Srinagar on Tuesday afternoon making announcements that the security forces were ordered to shoot-at-sight.

Following the Chief Minister, Mr Omar Abdullah’s request to the Centre for help on Monday, paramilitary reinforcements started arriving here from various parts of Jammu region and from outside the state. The Army has, meanwhile, secured a 100-km stretch of the Jammu-Srinagar highway from Banihal to Srinagar, and the Srinagar-Baltal portion of the road to eastern Ladakh.