Cleric Killed; 30 Mourners Slain in India : Kashmir: Troops open fire on 100,000 Muslims carrying assassinated religious leader’s body.

Security forces fired today on a crowd of 100,000 Muslims carrying the body of a slain Kashmir religious leader, and at least 30 people were killed and 200 injured, witnesses and doctors said.

State government officials in Srinagar could not be reached for comment.

Witnesses and doctors in Srinagar said 30 bodies and at least 200 people with bullet wounds were brought to Soura Hospital. Many of the injured said 40 more bodies still lay on the streets in the Srinagar neighborhood where the firing occurred.

The city was under curfew, and further details were not available immediately.

For five months soldiers and other security forces have been deployed in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, in a bid to control a violent campaign by Islamic militants who want the predominantly Muslim state to secede from mostly Hindu India.

The situation has renewed tensions between India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan, and a high-level U.S. delegation began talks in New Delhi today in an attempt to ease the friction.

Troops cordoned off the area around the shooting scene in the Hawal neighborhood. Hawal and nearby areas had been placed under curfew earlier in the day after the assassination of Maulvi Mohammed Farooq, Kashmir’s top Islamic religious leader.

Tens of thousands of mourners defied the curfew and carried Farooq’s coffin from the Soura Hospital to his office in Rajouri Kadal, a distance of six miles.

Members of the Central Reserve Police Force fired on the procession when it had traveled five miles, the witnesses said. There was no warning before the firing, they said.

The coffin was hit by bullets and Farooq’s body fell out, the witnesses said. Some of the mourners put the body, with fresh bullet wounds, back into the coffin and ran with it into the narrow alleys. They reached his office safely, they said.

Thousands of people converged on Rajouri Kadal to see the body. Farooq’s aides said the funeral date has not been set.

Farooq, 45, was shot in his office by three unidentified men after the trio took him from his residence to “talk,” said Farooq’s chief aide, Mohammed Maqbool.

A militant Islamic group leading the secessionist movement accused Indian forces of killing Farooq. Amanullah Khan, leader of the Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front, said the Indian army plotted Farooq’s death with the help of the Hindu fundamentalist organization Shiv Sena.

Farooq suffered 15 bullet wounds to the head, chest, stomach and legs and died later in Soura Hospital, a doctor said.

Farooq’s private secretary, Mohammed Yaqub, said the clergyman, before dying, accused Hindu fundamentalists of the killing.

Farooq had denounced the Indian military deployment and crackdown in Kashmir, but his importance in the troubled valley had been eclipsed by Muslims fighting for an independent nation.

After the Indian government began cracking down on the separatist movement Jan. 20, Farooq joined the call for independence. Before that, however, he had urged a political settlement of the problem.