NEW DELHI, Aug. 4 (UPI) -- The death toll in India's disputed northern Kashmir area rose to 24 after police opened fire on rioters, killing two people and injuring five more.
Some of the worst clashes between police and demonstrators have been in the Kashmir Valley area's main city Srinagar.
A curfew has been in place in all 10 districts of the Kashmir Valley area for a week because of demonstrations against Indian rule.
The Kashmir Valley -- 85 miles long and 20 miles wide -- lies between Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range. Its population of 4 million is mainly Muslim. India's northern state of Jammu and Kashmir periodically erupts violence where demonstrators demand the area be handed over to neighboring Pakistan.
Protests and ensuing violence are never far from the surface in the troubled Kashmir area. The British colonial rulers divided the region between the new states of the Hindi religion-dominated India and Muslim-dominated Pakistan.
Indian Kashmir remains Muslim-dominated and for the past 21 years, since the smashing of the Berlin wall, the Muslim majority have pushed for what they believe is their right to join Pakistan.
The latest unrest was sparked off in June when a 17-year-old student was killed by a police tear gas shell.
Despite the curfew people have been demonstrating continually for at least a week, burning cars and piles of tires in street, throwing stones at security forces and blockading roads in Srinagar.
In the nearby town of Budgam, police demanded demonstrators disperse and opened fire when they refused, hospitalizing two people, media reports said.
In another area of Srinagar, security forces reportedly opened fire, killing 25-year-old Mehraj Ahmed Lone and injuring three others, they said.
Last weekend saw some of the worst clashes, including one in which four civilians died in an explosion. In the Khrew area of Srinagar a mob set fire to a police station that housed explosives and a large liquid propane gas cylinder.
A mob later laid siege to another police station around 12 miles from Srinagar. Military units were rushed to the area to rescue the trapped policemen.
The continuing violence – the worst in two years -- prompted an emergency meeting in New Delhi between Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
After the meeting earlier in the week Abdullah publicly appealed for calm in the state to break the violence that is becoming too common.
"Tragically, we have locked ourselves into a cycle of violence where protests lead to death leading to further protests, leading to further casualties," Abdullah told a news conference.
The central government agreed to send nearly 2,000 paramilitary personnel to Kashmir and concentrate 3,200 security personnel already in the state into the worst hit areas in the Kashmir Valley.
