Two Killed in Kashmir Election Violence

A 16-year-old boy and a policeman were early casualties of today's elections in Kashmir, killed despite the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police on alert against militant attacks on voters and polling stations.

Police said the boy was killed when Muslim militants fired a rocket at a polling booth in Seri Khwaja, about 190km (118 miles) north-west of Jammu, the winter capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state. The rocket fire created a scare among voters, but polling resumed.

The policeman was killed hours before the polls opened by suspected rebels who fired on two polling stations in the southern part of the state.

In another village, two civilians were injured in a grenade explosion and were rushed to the hospital from the village of Shalal in the Kupwara district, about 100km north of Srinigar, the summer capital of Kashmir.

However the voting was less violent than many had feared, given the 440 people killed during the election campaign.

Indian election officials said 44% of those registered had voted in the five districts going to the polls - Kargil, Poonch, Rajouri, Kupwara and Baramulla.

Residents, though, said they had to balance two competing fears: being attacked by separatist militants who had vowed to kill anyone going to the polls, and being beaten by Indian soldiers trying to force people to vote.

For five decades, the mainly Muslim region of Kashmir has been the subject of a bloody tug-of-war between India and Pakistan. India controls two-thirds of the region and Pakistan the other third, and a heavily guarded line of control runs between the two.

The violence has stepped up in recent weeks, and separatist Muslim militants - who want to see India's Jammu-Kashmir state either handed over to Pakistani control or made independent - believe India will use the vote as a mandate for continued rule. Threats like this one, posted in a Baramula mosque, have been used to intimidate voters: "The first Muslim to go to vote will be rewarded with a bullet."

Some voters said they refused to be intimidated by the militant threats.

"This is our freedom, to choose who we want, so why should we be scared?" asked Abdul Khaliq Malik, a civil servant casting his vote at a heavily guarded high school in Kupwara, one of the most violent regions of Kashmir. Dozens of soldiers in full battle gear and carrying automatic weapons surrounded the school.

But others said they have been forced to the polls by threats or beatings from Indian soldiers.

"They beat me with rifle butts when I refused to come out of my home (to vote)," Mukhtar Ahmad told Reuters in Singhpora village, just outside Srinagar.

The Associated Press reported that in Baramula, army soldiers walked door to door, urging people to vote.

"There is nothing to fear," said Raghubir Singh, a retired Indian army captain who was among the first to cast his vote in Baramula. "This violence has been going on for years."

"We are scared, but if we don't come out the army will force us," said Ghulam Qadir Malik, a 65-year-old farmer in Kupwara. "In the morning, the army searched our house and told us to vote."

He said that after elections in 1996, soldiers came back to the town and beat up those who did not vote.

The state elections are staggered over four phases - September 16 and 24, and October 1 and 8. Foreign diplomats from a dozen countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada, France and Germany, were monitoring the vote at the invitation of the Indian government.

Nearly all shops and businesses remained closed in the Kashmir valley in response to a call for a strike by the separatist alliance, All Parties Hurriyat Conference. In Srinagar, the separatist Jammu-Kashmir Liberation Front held a demonstration and called the polls "a farcical exercise aimed to mislead the world about the aspirations of the Kashmiri people".

Islamic militants have killed nearly 100 political activists this year, including a government minister last week. More than 60,000 people have been killed in fighting between the government and insurgents since 1989.