SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Violence flared in Kashmir on Friday, a day after the prime ministers of India and Pakistan signalled a thaw in relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
One civilian was killed when anti-India protesters attacked a bus in Srinagar, and at least a dozen were injured when police fired teargas shells to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators, authorities said.
Police detained Kashmir's hardline separatist leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who had called for a march to the U.N. Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan to protest human rights violations allegedly by government troops.
The chief of the separatist All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) alliance, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was placed under house arrest to prevent further demonstrations, a police official said.
"The U.N. march was foiled and arrests were made to prevent large scale protests," said the official, who asked not to be named.
The protests come a day after the prime ministers of the two countries held talks in Bhutan and asked their officials to take steps to normalise relations.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of anti-India insurgency in Muslim-majority Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan by a ceasefire line monitored by the United Nations and claimed by both.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.
Reporting by Sheikh Mushtaq; Editing by Rina Chandran
Reuters India
