Eight killed as Kashmir reels from deadly year

SRINAGAR AFP Nov25, 2018- Eight people were killed Sunday in violence in Indian-administered Kashmir, capping off one of the deadliest weeks this year in a region already suffering its worst bloodshed in a decade.   

Kashmir-based rights monitors say 528 people have died this year from armed conflict in the disputed Himalayan territory claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, including 145 civilians.   

It is the deadliest year since 2009, said the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies, underscoring a worsening security situation in the Muslim-majority region controlled by India and half a million of its troops.   

Police said Sunday that six alleged militants and a soldier were killed in a shootout in Shopian, a southern district of the Kashmir Valley.   

A civilian was also killed when Indian forces fired shots into a crowd of protesters that gathered near the scene of the shootout, senior police official Munir Ahmad Khan told AFP.   

Elsewhere in Kashmir 10 suspected militants and four others, including a teenage girl and a prominent separatist activist ,were gunned down in separate clashes, taking the week’s total death toll to 22.   

Police said the activist was killed by rivals but separatist leaders said the government orchestrated his assassination.