SRINAGAR, India (AFP) — Indian police used tear gas and gunfire to disperse hundreds of protesters in Kashmir on Tuesday as the death toll among defiant demonstrators rose to five, officials said.
In a continuing crackdown on anti-India separatists, two more leaders, including the head of a women's group, were arrested on Tuesday, they said.
Officers said they used batons as protesters broke a curfew and gathered at three different villages in southern Kashmir a day after four people were killed in police shootings and more than 100 injured in clashes as the restrictions were flouted.
One of the injured died in hospital Tuesday, doctors said.
"A strict curfew remains in force all over the Kashmir valley," police officer Pervez Ahmed said in summer capital Srinagar, as New Delhi tried to end a series of major demonstrations against its rule in the mainly Muslim region.
The latest troubles were triggered by a state government plan made public in June to donate land to a Hindu shrine trust in the Kashmir valley. The decision was later reversed after massive Muslim protests, angering Hindus.
The crackdown prevented a planned rally on Monday by separatists in Srinagar's historic Red Square.
Ahead of the scheduled event, authorities arrested three leading separatists.
The three -- Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik -- have recently led some of the largest pro-independence demonstrations since armed militants launched an insurgency against Indian rule in 1989.
Police on Tuesday also arrested Asiya Andrabi, the region's leading female separatist, who heads the pro-Pakistan Dukhtaran-e-Milat or Daughters of Faith, Ahmed said, as well as Geelani's close aide Ashraf Sehrai.
Since June, at least 37 Muslims and three Hindus have died in police shootings on protesters in the Kashmir valley and the mainly Hindu area of Jammu.
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