Stone-throwing in downtown Srinagar after Friday prayers

Srinagar, June 24

Protests and clashes erupted in the downtown area of Srinagar city after the Friday prayers today. Protests and stone-throwing after the prayers were also reported from Anantnag and Kupwara and Sopore towns of the Valley.

Youths threw stones and engaged the security forces in pitched battles in the old city areas with some masked youths also raising ISIS and Pakistani flags.

As soon as the Friday payers were over in the grand mosque in the Nowhatta area of Srinagar, where earlier Mirwaiz Umar Farooq delivered a sermon, protesters took to the streets and started throwing stones at the security personnel who were deployed in the area.

The youths also shouted pro-freedom slogans and threw stones at the police in the narrow lanes and bylanes of the area. The police responded by resorting to tear-smoke shelling to disperse the protesters.

Earlier, the protesting youth also offered funeral in absentia to the seven militants killed in three different gunfights in the frontier Kupwara district of north Kashmir over the past 24 hours. One group of masked youth held a black banner reading “Allow abhaya in DPS.

Clashes and protests were reported from south’s Kashmir’s Anantnag town, where protesters took to the streets after the Friday prayers in Reshi Bazar and Sherbagh localities.

The youths also pelted the Sherbagh police station with stones. The protests later also spread to the Cheeni chowk and Mattan adda areas.

Protests and stone-throwing were also witnessed in Kupwara town in which several policemen got injured. Besides, scores of private vehicles were also damaged in the stone-throwing. Earlier, Tehreek-e-Hurriyat leader Peer Saifullah had addressed a Friday congregation in the town. — TNS