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Srinagar: Police battled thousands of stone-throwing protesters across Kashmir on Thursday as demonstrations over the transfer of forest land to a Hindu shrine trust spread in the region, police said.
Two people were injured when police fired at protesters in Anantnag, south of Srinagar. Dozens were injured in other parts of Kashmir when police fired teargas at protesters.
Separatist slogans
Hundreds of protesters carrying banners stating "Sale of Kashmir not acceptable" and "Down with India, we want freedom," marched through Srinagar before police fired teargas to disperse them.
Authorities had transferred nearly 100 acres of forest land in Kashmir to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board (SASB) to erect temporary shelters for thousands of Hindu pilgrims who annually trek to a cave shrine in the mountains.
Shops, businesses, schools and colleges remained closed across the state, where tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of insurgency.
Three persons have so far been killed in police firing since the protests broke out on Monday.
Protesters say the land transfer was aimed at changing the demography of Kashmir while green activists have warned that any construction on forest land could ruin the region's fragile ecology.
Critics say the protests are politically motivated ahead of state elections due later this year.
'No solution in sight'
"Back to '90s," read a banner headline of Greater Kashmir, the region's leading English language newspaper, referring to mass protests in the early 1990s when tens of thousands took to streets across the region demanding Kashmir's cessation from India.
"The atmosphere is highly surcharged and there is hardly any way out in sight or any political solution available at hand to neutralise the situation," the Rising Kashmir newspaper said in its editorial titled "Kashmir on fire."
Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad promised that there would be no construction on the transferred land at the base camp for the pilgrimage.
During the two-month-long pilgrimage, thousands of Hindus from across India walk and ride ponies to the cave, situated at an altitude of 3,800 metres, to pray by an ice stalagmite they believe to be a symbol of Hindu deity Shiva.
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