Kashmir Muslims protest road blockade by Hindus

SRINAGAR, India - Security forces fired warning shots and tear gas shells on Monday in an attempt to prevent tens of thousands of Muslims marching toward Pakistan's portion of divided Kashmir to protest a road blockade by Hindus, police said.
At least 50 people were taken to a hospital with injuries caused by bullets and tear gas, including one who later died, said Asif Drabu, a doctor at a hospital in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Another man was killed when police opened fire on angry protesters who torched two police vehicles near Sangrama, a village on the highway that connects Indian Kashmir with the portion of the Himalayan region that is under Pakistan, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
Police said four officers were injured when protesters hurled rocks at them in Sopore, another of the several towns from where protesters set out.
In Srinigar, large crowds pushed aside steel barricades set up by police and began walking toward the de facto border between the Indian and Pakistani portions of the Himalayan territory.
By afternoon, they were 28 miles (45 kilometers) from the cease-fire line but the spokesman for the Indian army in Srinagar said that the army has taken all precautionary measures to control the situation."
Local authorities also imposed a curfew in Uri, the last town on the Indian side of the Kashmir frontier.
We want independence," Demolish the LOC," the protesters chanted, referring to the Line of Control, as the de facto frontier is known.
In a show of solidarity, some 4,000 supporters of Islamic groups, some chanting We will snatch freedom," left Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, for the border town of Chakothi.
They traveled in more than 100 buses, trucks and other vehicles bearing the flags of Islamist political and militant groups.
We want to go to Chakothi to send them goods because they are facing an economic blockade," said Uzair Ghazali, a spokesman for Hezbul Mujahedeen, a Kashmiri insurgent group.
An alliance of nonviolent groups seeking independence for the Indian portion of Muslim-majority Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan called the demonstrations to protest a blockade by Hindus of a key highway linking the Kashmir Valley with the rest of India.
Indian authorities placed two key separatist leaders under house arrest Sunday to prevent them from leading the demonstrations.
Kashmiri traders said police and paramilitary soldiers also seized dozens of fruit-laden trucks and deflated the tires of other vehicles which the protesters had planned to drive during the procession.
Traders have warned that Kashmir faces shortages of food and medicine because of the highway blockade, and complain that hundreds of truckloads of Kashmiri fruit are spoiling because they cannot be delivered.
Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil visited Srinagar on Sunday and promised to restore normalcy as quickly as possible. The state governor played down the blockade last week as a traffic disruption."
The protests are the latest development in a political crisis that began in June with a dispute over land near a Hindu shrine and has boiled over into deadly rioting and rising animosity between Muslims and Hindus.
Kashmir's Hindu minority was angered when the state government reversed a June decision to give 99 acres (40 hectares) of land to a Hindu trust to build facilities for pilgrims near the shrine. Muslims complained that the gift of land would alter the religious balance in the region.
Protests by both sides escalated into 47 days of rioting that left 12 people dead, transforming the dispute into one of the worst political crises to hit a region plagued by years of brutal fighting between separatist rebels and Indian security forces.