SRINAGAR (Web Desk) – More than 40 days of clashes between protesters and security forces have overwhelmed the main hospital in Indian held Kashmir, where some patients with severe injuries said they had been beaten in their homes by troops.
House-to-house searches continued on Friday, authorities said, for suspected ringleaders of street protests sparked by the killing on July 8 of a popular rebel leader.
At least 65 people have been killed and 6,000 injured in the ensuing clashes, many of them wounded by shotgun rounds fired by security forces enforcing a curfew across the Muslim-majority region, according to media reports.
Pictures of Srinagar’s main SMHS Hospital showed men with weals across their backs and buttocks that they said had been caused by beatings.
Another showed a crying boy, his head swathed in bandages, as he was comforted by his family, who said he had been wounded by shotgun pellets.
Doctors at the hospital were exhausted, with one saying they had performed more eye operations in the past month than they had over the last three years.
“We have here less number of beds and staff. We are in physical and mental stress,” said Nisarul Hassan, senior consultant at SMHS hospital who was forced to use an ambulance to get back home.
The Indian army has admitted to, and apologised for, the death of a college lecturer in one beating. A senior army officer said on Friday the forces were trying not to react to acts of provocation.
“Militants are hiding behind the stone pelters and are trying to provoke security forces into firing on them, but we are exercising restraint to avoid civilian casualties,” Lieutenant General SK Dua told a news conference in Srinagar.
“They want us to fire on them and we will not do it. We are exercising restraint to avoid collateral damage.”
