General News
INDIA KASHMIR FUNERAL
A Kashmiri villager mourns over the grave of Ruhullah Bhat, a top separatist commander at Awalyura village some 62 kms south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, 02 February 2008. Atleast 20,000 Kashmiri villagers joined the funeral procession of Bhat, a top commander of pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen in the Indian portion of Kashmir, who was killed in a gunbattle with Indian forces a day earlier. Separatist groups have been demanding Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with neighboring Pakistan for more than five decades. The campaign turned violent in 1989 with more than a dozen militant groups fighting Indian security forces. The insurgency has so far killed more than 80,000 people, most of them civilians.
