SRINAGAR: Security forces fired in the air and burst teargas shells to disperse a crowd near a police station in the frontier district of Kupwara, where the Army claimed to have killed seven militants in an encounter on Monday.
Witnesses said at least 10 people including five photojournalists were injured in the ongoing clashes between police and protesters.
Thousands of people, including women, gathered outside the police station at Lalpora, Kupwara, demanding the identity of militants killed by the Army at Dardpora Lolab in Kupwara.
They alleged that seven locals had gone for hunting in the forest and have not returned yet.
Army on Monday evening said its troops killed seven separatist militants in a fierce gunbattle, the highest number of guerrillas killed in a single firefight in the Himalayan region in recent months.
The identity of the slain militants has not been established.
Demanding the bodies of the dead persons for burial, villagers in Lolab area of north Kashmir’s Kupwara district threw stones at the police and attempted to set afire a building in Lolab Police Station, about 110km north of Srinagar.
