NEW DELHI: A curfew is in force in most parts of Indian-administered Kashmir following a strike call and a protest rally by separatists to against the killing of protesting villagers in the Himalayan region a day earlier.

Thousands of police and paramilitary soldiers have erected checkpoints and laid barbed wire on roads in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir to prevent any anti-India protests on Friday.

Locals say police and paramilitary soldiers drove through neighborhoods warning people to stay indoors.

Although authorities have not officially declared a curfew in the troubled Himalayan region, residents said they were not being allowed to go about their business.

“Early in the morning, troops appeared all around my neighbourhood disallowing people from coming out onto the streets,” a resident of the old part of Srinagar, Farhan Ahmed, told AFP by phone.

“It is undeclared curfew,” he said.

The curfew and strike follow the fatal shootings of protesting villagers by government troops on Thursday.

Troops fired on protesters on Thursday, after residents of the district of Gool gathered to demonstrate against what they said was beating up of a caretaker and desecrating a Quran by BSF troopers, during a search for militants inside a madrassa in Gool late on Wednesday.

They gathered outside a base of the Border Security Forces (BSF) in Gool region, 230 kilometres south of Srinagar.

Police officers initially said six protesters were killed in the firing.

But inspector-general of police, Rajesh Kumar, clarified on Friday that only four had died.

“The fact is that the number of dead is four. The confusion was because we were busy in dealing with law and order and also due to the spotty nature of telecommunications in the mountainous area,” Kumar told AFP.

More than 40 others were also injured as troops clashed with locals protesting the alleged desecration of the Muslim holy book by border guards in a remote, mountainous village in the region, police said.