Army men kill two civilians in J&K

Two civilians died of bullet injuries when army men opened fire following a scuffle on Monday morning with the villagers of Dangerpora, near Chadoora in central Kashmir's Budgam district.

According to police sources, troops of the 35 Rashtriya Rifles were involved in a search operation in the village, 30 km from Srinagar. They asked the villagers to gather in an open field for conducting the house-to-house searches.

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However, the villagers demanded that they be allowed to return to their homes as it was cold outside. In the ensuing scuffle, the troops allegedly roughed up two persons.

Some villagers, angered over this, hurled kangris (traditional Kashmiri fire pots) at the soldiers. The soldiers then allegedly opened fire from automatic weapons, injuring three persons, the sources said. Two of them succumbed in hospital, they added.

Budgam district magistrate Khawaja Bashir Ahmed visited the village late in the afternoon. A senior army officer who also visited the area, told the villagers that a "court of inquiry has been ordered into the unfortunate incident."

Later, hundreds of villagers held a demonstration against the killings.

In another incident, 15 persons, including two security men, were injured in two explosions in the capital city, according to the police. They are undergoing treatment in Srinagar.

Meanwhile, villagers of Handwara in north Kashmir having been holding protests for the past three days against the killing of one Tajamul Haq in a police encounter in Srinagar on Saturday.

Haq was one of the four hardcore Lashkar-e-Taiba militants killed in the encounter, the police said.

However, the villagers claim that Haq had nothing to do with militancy. The protests have crippled normal life, forcing closure of educational institutions and disrupting traffic.

Haq's burial was postponed for three days as the villagers were demanding an apology from Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

The CM had described the encounter as a "great success for the local police".

However, the zonal police headquarters in Srinagar said, "Tajamul Haq was buried on Monday in his ancestral graveyard at Kulangam." The statement said that Haq was an active militant and not "innocent as claimed by certain elements".