KASHMIR - INDIAN SECURITY forces shot dead 13 protesters in northern, insurgency-ridden Jammu and Kashmir province yesterday following the ongoing row over the transfer of land to a Hindu organisation in the country's only Muslim-majority province.
Police and military personnel enforced a daylight curfew across the troubled region to prevent large-scale rioting but resorted to gunfire in the face of large crowds of stone-throwing youths, officials in the state's summer capital, Srinagar, said.
The firing came a day after a leading separatist Kashmiri politician and four other protesters were killed after army personnel fired on thousands of protesters attempting to cross the disputed frontier into Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The unrest, which has shattered several years of relative calm across Kashmir, erupted after the provincial authorities transferred 99 acres of government land to a local Hindu pilgrimage trust, the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board, in June.
The plot was meant for the board to erect temporary huts and toilets for over 450,000 pilgrims who annually trek to a shrine in a mountain cave high in the Kashmiri Himalayas.
But protests by Kashmiri Muslims who feared the land grant was a calculated move to alter the area's demographic balance in which they numerically dominated, led to a nervous provincial administration cancelling its earlier order.
This backtracking triggered a violent Hindu reaction that has been seething for over six weeks, leading to the blockade and prompting, in turn, Kashmiri Muslims to retaliate.
The blockade by Jammu's Hindus of the only road connecting the Kashmir Valley to the rest of the country, meanwhile, not only led to shortages of essentials like medicine and food, but also prevented fruit grown in the lush valley area from being transported out. This has adversely affected thousands of farmers dependent on the selling produce for sustenance.
Monday's march to Pakistani territory by thousands of locals was an attempt by the Kashmir Fruit Growers Association to cross the unresolved border or Line of Control in order to market their produce in Pakistan-administered Kashmir's capital Muzaffarabad, a move the Indian government cannot countenance.
The Line of Control divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan - the neighbouring nuclear rivals who both claim the province. The two countries have fought two of their three wars and an 11-week long border skirmish over Kashmir since independence 61 years ago.
Meanwhile, Kashmir's latest round of turbulence has further exacerbated the prevailing crisis in the region where several Muslim separatist groups have been waging war for independence or union with Pakistan, a struggle in which over 65,000 people have died since 1989.
India accuses Pakistan of fuelling the ongoing Muslim insurgency, a claim that Islamabad denies.
In politically charged Kashmir, however, the anti-blockade protests have grown to become pro-independence rallies, providing sustenance to insurgent and separatist groups whose influence was declining, and further imperilling the troubled region's future.
Some 500,000 Indian military, paramilitary and local police have been deployed across Kashmir. But all attempts by the federal government to resolve the crisis by cutting across party lines has so far proved futile.