SRINAGAR: A gunfight near a 14th century shrine left at least four people dead here on Wednesday and sparked protests in the city, police said.

While deadly violence has increased in recent months across the restive India-held Kashmir such shootouts are rare in Srinagar.

Police said three fighters were martyred and a police officer was killed in the gun battle near Khanqah-i-Moula shrine in Srinagar’s Old City.

The clash sparked a showdown between protesters and police, who fired tear gas at stone-throwing demonstrators shouting anti-India slogans.

Shops and schools were closed as news of the incident spread, and internet services were suspended across the city.

Indian government forces cordoned off the Fateh Kadal locality, close to the shrine, after they received information about fighters hiding in a house, a police statement claimed.

Witnesses said the gunfight broke out after soldiers knocked at the door of a house and took away a young man. “We don’t know where he is and now we hear (police) say he was a militant,” the young man’s brother Asif Nabi told reporters outside his home, which was burned down.

Police rejected this version of events saying that the man, though not known earlier to authorities, refused to leave the house when given the opportunity and instead opened fire on troops.

As the firefight wound down, officers turned on journalists reporting at the site of the encounter, injuring at least one reporter and two cameramen.

“They (police) just lunged at us and started beating us with sticks and then fired in the air. The empty cartridges hit my head,” Asif Qureshi, a journalist with an Indian news station, said.

India has some 500,000 troops deployed in held Kashmir, where groups demand independence or a merger with Pakistan. Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2018