Indian Kashmir

The latest murky cycle of violence in Indian-held Kashmir began late Monday in the Gangbugh neighborhood of Srinagar. Residents say paramilitary officers chased Muzaffar Ahmad Bhat, 17, and two 11th grade friends, possibly fired shots in their direction — the details were not clear. The frightened youths jumped into a drainage canal to get away. Bhat, who could swim, failed to return home and the community mounted a search. At dawn, his body was found floating in the canal.

Normally meat-centric McDonald's confirmed that it plans to open two all-vegetarian locations in India - and now customers, herbivore activists and others are buzzing. One no-meat branch will be based in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in northern India and another in Katra near the Vaishno Devi cave shrine in Indian Kashmir, said spokeswoman Becca Hary in a statement.   The chain expanded into India through New Delhi and Mumbai in 1996. Many Indians avoid meat - especially beef and pork - for religious reasons.

Indian authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Kashmir today to block a planned rally by separatists, the latest in a string of anti-India protests in the disputed Himalayan region. Police used loudspeakers to tell people to remain indoors as thousands of police officers and soldiers patrolled empty streets to enforce the curfew. In the last two months, Kashmir has seen some of the biggest anti-India demonstrations since a separatist revolt against New Delhi's rule erupted in 1989.

Imagine being cooped up in your house for a day, or maybe even a week, unable to work, attend school, buy groceries, visit a doctor. Then imagine months of this, year after year, going back to 1990. That's the reality for residents of the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, who have been forced for decades to navigate work stoppages, curfews, militant incursions and crackdowns. Even as politicians, bureaucrats and bedecked commanders argue, seemingly endlessly, over the future of a divided region that has sparked two wars between India and Pakistan since 1947, it's the ordinary people who have suffered the most.

You can forget the popcorn. At the only working movie theater in Indian Kashmir, this is what a moviegoer endures: a frisking, a walk past sandbagged bunkers and a once-over by soldiers wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. But there are plenty of seats. Every day, Noor Mohammad, manager of the Neelam Cinema, stares at the empty rows, a fruitless wait for customers in a land where the violence of everyday life is more dramatic than on-screen fiction.

Hundreds of Hindu protesters set fire to a police post in Jammu city in Indian Kashmir, defying a curfew. Hindu crowds also set fire to a government apartment, and hundreds, including children, marched to police stations and courted arrest as part of their movement to flood the region's jails in a civil disobedience campaign over a dispute about land for a Hindu shrine. At least 12 people, including four policemen, were injured when they clashed in three places in Jammu, Indian Kashmir's winter capital, police said.

Three people were killed when Indian forces opened fire across the U.N.-monitored cease-fire line in Kashmir, an official of the Azad (free) Kashmir government said Sunday. Exchanges of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops across the control line that divides disputed Kashmir have become more common in the 18 months since a Muslim revolt flared in Indian Kashmir.

Police fired warning shots and used tear gas and batons to quell thousands of protesters across Indian Kashmir after the deaths of two young women who residents say were raped and killed by Indian soldiers. More than 100 people, including 15 police officers, were injured in clashes between government forces and protesters in Srinagar, the main city of the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, and several towns in the region, police said. Police have rejected the protesters' allegations and said the women appeared to have drowned in a stream.

Muslim Kashmiri militants fighting for secession from India have killed all three hostages they took in an effort to free colleagues from jail, police said today. The secessionists killed one hostage, H. L. Khera, the manager of a state-run machine tools factory, in broad daylight in front of Indian Kashmir's heavily guarded police headquarters Tuesday afternoon. Police said the bodies of the two others were found dumped in a Srinagar suburb late Tuesday night.

Twenty people have died in separatist violence in Indian Kashmir over 24 hours, but officials say guerrilla violence has eased as Muslim fighters head for Afghanistan to prepare for a possible U.S. attack. "On Monday, army soldiers foiled an infiltration bid and shot dead five militants at Machil sector," an Indian army spokesman said, speaking of one of the incidents. The sector lies on the Line of Control that divides the Kashmir region, which both India and Pakistan claim.

The latest murky cycle of violence in Indian-held Kashmir began late Monday in the Gangbugh neighborhood of Srinagar. Residents say paramilitary officers chased Muzaffar Ahmad Bhat, 17, and two 11th grade friends, possibly fired shots in their direction — the details were not clear. The frightened youths jumped into a drainage canal to get away. Bhat, who could swim, failed to return home and the community mounted a search. At dawn, his body was found floating in the canal.

Police fired warning shots and used tear gas and batons to quell thousands of protesters across Indian Kashmir after the deaths of two young women who residents say were raped and killed by Indian soldiers. More than 100 people, including 15 police officers, were injured in clashes between government forces and protesters in Srinagar, the main city of the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, and several towns in the region, police said. Police have rejected the protesters' allegations and said the women appeared to have drowned in a stream.

Indian authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Kashmir today to block a planned rally by separatists, the latest in a string of anti-India protests in the disputed Himalayan region. Police used loudspeakers to tell people to remain indoors as thousands of police officers and soldiers patrolled empty streets to enforce the curfew. In the last two months, Kashmir has seen some of the biggest anti-India demonstrations since a separatist revolt against New Delhi's rule erupted in 1989.

Hundreds of Hindu protesters set fire to a police post in Jammu city in Indian Kashmir, defying a curfew. Hindu crowds also set fire to a government apartment, and hundreds, including children, marched to police stations and courted arrest as part of their movement to flood the region's jails in a civil disobedience campaign over a dispute about land for a Hindu shrine. At least 12 people, including four policemen, were injured when they clashed in three places in Jammu, Indian Kashmir's winter capital, police said.

You can forget the popcorn. At the only working movie theater in Indian Kashmir, this is what a moviegoer endures: a frisking, a walk past sandbagged bunkers and a once-over by soldiers wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. But there are plenty of seats. Every day, Noor Mohammad, manager of the Neelam Cinema, stares at the empty rows, a fruitless wait for customers in a land where the violence of everyday life is more dramatic than on-screen fiction.

The mailman delivered the first clues in the disappearance of Bushan Lal. They were written in a letter from someone claiming to be a member of the Indian army, who identified himself only as "a savior of humanity." The anonymous informant claimed that Indian soldiers had killed Lal, 25, along with three other porters hired to carry equipment and supplies for army troops fighting insurgents in disputed Kashmir.

Twenty-one people, including five Hindu villagers, were killed on Sunday in several incidents of separatist violence in Indian Kashmir, police said. The violence comes despite U.S.-led international efforts to pull nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan back from the brink of a fourth war. Police said suspected Muslim rebels shot dead five Hindu villagers in the Himalayan region's Udhampur district on Sunday. Security forces rushed to the village.

India's proposals to reduce tensions with Pakistan should provide a good starting point for talks between the nuclear-armed neighbors, which came perilously close to war less than two years ago. Pakistan last week sensibly ended its initial dithering and grumbling that the proposals were weak and agreed to discussions.

A day after India swore in its new prime minister, separatist Kashmiri militants set off a remote-controlled bomb that killed 33 people in a bus carrying Indian troops and their families going on vacation. The bomb exploded with such force that it ripped apart the bus and engulfed it in flames, state police Inspector-General Rajendra Kumar said in a telephone interview after visiting the site. "As a result, most of the victims were trapped inside and charred to death," he said.

Enemies stand so close along this Kashmir frontier that in good times Indian soldiers can shout across the no man's land and invite Pakistani troops over for lunch. When the mood sours, they have a clear shot at each other. These days, something more than decades-old hostilities is separating the antagonists: a 500-mile-long, 12-foot-tall, barbed-wire fence.