Click to play videoSrinagar: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Jammu and Kashmir was marred by violent protests in Srinagar in which two people were killed and 75 others injured.
The two people died when security forces opened fire to quell violent street protests led by separatist organisations against Manmohan two-day visit to the state.
The dead have been identified as Mehraj-ud-din Sheikh alias "Babloo" and Shafat Ahmad Dar. They were killed when security forces opened fire at Nowhatta and nearby areas in the vicinity of Jamia Masjid in Srinagar, official sources said.
While Sheikh succumbed in hospital, Dar fell to the bullets on Friday evening while taking part in a protest to mourn the death of Sheikh, the sources said.
Soon after Friday prayers hundreds of people took to streets in the Valley and also in Baramulla to protest against Manmohan's visit.
Earlier, the day-long clashes between police and the protestors in the sensitive area left 55 persons, including 25 security personnel, injured, the sources said adding the injured CRPF personnel included an assistant commandant of the force.
A police spokesman said security forces opened fire when a group of violent protestors resorted to stone-pelting in a bid to ransack police station at Nowhatta.
Three barricades and a CRPF bunker at Nowhatta police station were damaged in the clashes, the police spokesman added.
The sources said reinforcements of security forces have been rushed to the area to resorte law and order as clashes continued late into the evening.
Thousands of protesters gathered at the hospitals where the bodies of the deceased youth were lying, the sources said.
Violence also rocked Maisuma, Gawkadal and Nai Sarak in the heart of the city and Baramulla district town of North Kashmir where group of youth indulged in stone-pelting and police assisted by paramilitary forces retaliated with teargas shells, rubber bullets and batons, the sources said.
They said 15 persons, including nine security personnel, were injured in the clashes which continued for most part of the day.
Groups of youths also shouted slogans against Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari for his comments that militants operating in Jammu and Kashmir were "terrorists" and torched his effigies at Budshah Chowk in the heart of the city and outside Jamia Masjid, the sources said.
In other places, the protesters dispersed peacefully but life in the Kashmir Valley was affected by a strike called by separatists against the visit of the Prime Minister who commissioned the Baglihar hydel power project at Ramban.
The separatists coordination committee "has given a call for peaceful protests today and observance of civil curfew tomorrow to convey to the Prime Minister that Kashmir problem is not an issue of packages but involves the future of a nation," chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) Mohammad Yasin Malik said addressing a gathering outside his party headquarters at Maisuma.
(With inputs from PTI)
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