Kashmir Town Mourns 37 Dead in Police Firing

Unlike most towns in Kashmir, there was no curfew in Bijbehara when hundreds of people poured out of a mosque shouting freedom slogans to support militants in Srinagar, 35 miles up the road.

Waiting at both ends of the street, paramilitary police opened fire--without warning, according to some witnesses. The gunfire killed 37 people and wounded about 100. At the same time Friday, at least five more people were killed in Srinagar.

On Saturday, police were sweeping away a litter of shoes, sandals and hats that protesters lost when they fled down nearby alleys. Bloodstained clothes lay scattered on the gray cement.

“It is a major tragedy. We don’t know why it happened. There will have to be an investigation, but the facts are very, very grim,” said Wajahat Habibullah, a senior Indian official who inspected the scene.

The government announced that it would conduct an inquiry.

The massacre at Bijbehara capped a weeklong confrontation that brought into focus the seemingly irreconcilable conflict over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir--held by India, claimed by Pakistan and fought for by independence-minded Kashmiris.

The latest crisis began Oct. 15 when militants seized the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar, which houses a hair said to have come from the prophet Mohammed. The militants said they occupied the mosque to protect the hair from Indian authorities, who they alleged were planning to steal it.

The army, countering that the militants wanted to steal the sacred relic to incite Muslim disorder, laid siege to the white marble building on the shore of placid Dal Lake.

The ensuing standoff, the curfews that confined hundreds of thousands of people to their homes and Friday’s massacre combined to galvanize Kashmiris against India.

More than 7,500 people have died since the insurrection escalated in late 1989.

The crisis also soured what looked like a promising beginning with India for Pakistan’s new prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

“Such brazen disregard for human lives can only aggravate tension in occupied Kashmir,” she said in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, after leaving a Commonwealth conference in Cyprus.