Troops lock down Kashmir as India votes to strip its status

Indian lawmakers passed a bill on Tuesday that strips the statehood from the India-administered portion of Muslim-majority Kashmir amid an indefinite security lockdown in the disputed Himalayan territory, actions that neighbouring Pakistan warned could lead to war.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist-led government submitted the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Bill for a vote by the lower house of Parliament a day after the surprise measure was introduced alongside a presidential order. That order dissolved a constitutional provision, known as Article 370, which gave Kashmiris exclusive hereditary rights and a separate constitution.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and both claim the region in its entirety, although each of them controls only parts of it. Two of the three wars the nuclear-armed neighbours have fought since their independence from British rule were over Kashmir.

How the 7 million people in the Kashmir Valley were reacting was unclear, because the Indian government shut off most communication with it, including internet, cellphone and landline networks.

Troops deployed

Thousands of troops were deployed to the restive region amid fears that the government's steps could spark unrest in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

Tensions also have soared along the Line of Control, the volatile, highly militarised frontier that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

Hundreds of people in various parts of Pakistan and in its part of Kashmir rallied against Modi, burning him in effigy and torching Indian flags to condemn India's moves.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said in an address to Parliament on Tuesday night that he feared the Kashmiri people, angered over India's decision to strip the region of its special status, could attack Indian security forces and that New Delhi could blame Pakistan for it.

"If India attacks us, we will respond," Khan said. "We will fight until the last drop of blood."

In February, a bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed 40 Indian troops. India responded with an air strike inside Pakistan, blaming a Pakistani group for the attack.

On Tuesday, the Pakistani military was on high alert following reports that New Delhi was continuing to send additional troops to the region. Pakistan's top military commanders met in the garrison city of Rawalpindi to discuss the changes in Kashmir.

China, which also lays claim to a portion of Kashmir, is "seriously concerned" about the situation, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

"China's position on the Kashmir issue is clear and consistent. It is also an international consensus that the Kashmir issue is an issue left from the past between India and Pakistan.

The relevant sides need to exercise restraint and act prudently. In particular, they should refrain from taking actions that will unilaterally change the status quo and escalate tensions," she said.

India's lower house ratified the bill, which strips the status of Jammu and Kashmir from a state to a union territory with a legislature and carves out Buddhist-majority Ladakh, a pristine, sparsely populated area that stretches from the Siachen Glacier to the Himalayas, as a separate union territory without a legislature.

The upper house approved the bill by a two-thirds majority, with many opposition lawmakers voting with the ruling Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Indian TV news channels in Srinagar, Kashmir's main city, showed security personnel, including armed soldiers in camouflage, standing near barbed wire barricades in the otherwise empty streets.

Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police Dilbagh Singh said Srinagar was "totally peaceful," the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

UN urges to show restraint

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged all parties to show restraint, said spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

"We are following with concern the tense situation in the region," Dujarric said. "We're also aware of reports of restrictions on the Indian side of Kashmir, and we urge all parties to exercise restraint."

TRT World's Neha Poonia reports.

Protests, fear, gunfire in Kashmir 

Fear gripped Indian Kashmir on Tuesday as residents leaving the restive territory spoke of a tense military crackdown and protests breaking out against the shock government move to scrap its autonomous status.

At least six people were injured in protests that erupted after a presidential decree on Monday removed the Muslim-majority region's special status, sources said.

A hospital in the main city of Srinagar had admitted six patients with gunshot wounds or other injuries caused by non-lethal weapons, a source at the facility said on condition of anonymity.

The Himalayan region has been virtually cut off from the rest of the country after authorities took down phone and internet services ahead of Monday's announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government.

Public gatherings and rallies have also been banned.

In some of the first observations reported from the cut-off communities, passengers who arrived at India's capital New Delhi on flights from Srinagar, the main city in India-administered Kashmir, spoke of the uneasy mood in the state.

A traveller, who asked to remain anonymous, said he heard intermittent gunfire and other weapons being fired since Monday, soldiers shouting during the night, and saw government troops deployed "every five steps."

"My car was checked at least 25 times on the way to the airport and it took me almost four hours to cover a distance of hardly 30 minutes," he told AFP.

Mubeen Masoodi, who also arrived on Tuesday from Srinagar, said he was at a wedding on Sunday night when suddenly the revellers realised their phones were no longer working.

"While we were having our food [around] midnight, that is when the phones one by one went [off] ... and that's when people realised something big is happening and everyone just rushed back home," he said.

Another plane passenger, Farooq Sheikh, told the Press Trust of India that he felt "caged inside in our own city."

"Our mobile phone connection has been snapped, internet shut, even cable TVs and landlines are down. We felt like we were caged, or being jailed in our own home, our own city," he said.

Sanna Wani, a Kashmiri poet, took to Twitter to describe the fear and panic gripping Srinagar before she managed to get a flight out.

She said even those residents citing medical emergencies were not allowed to get past a security checkpoint.

The stories of apprehension felt by Kashmiri residents came as UNHCR spokesman Rupert Colville said the communications blackout and security clampdown were deeply concerning.

"We are seeing, again, blanket telecommunications restrictions, perhaps more blanket than we have ever seen before, the reported arbitrary detention of political leaders and restrictions on peaceful assembly," he told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.