SRINAGAR: Twenty people were hurt Thursday in fresh clashes with police after the death of a nine-year old boy injured during a weekend protest in Indian Occupied Kashmir, police said.The death brought to 59 the number of protesters and bystanders killed in two months of violent protests in the mainly Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, most of them young men or teenagers shot dead by security forces.
The boy, who was not part of any protest, had been shot in southern Kulgam district Saturday and died in hospital Thursday, police said.
"He was injured when a stray bullet hit him after security forces opened fire to quell a demonstration," a police spokesman said.
Thousands of Kulgam residents, shouting, "We want freedom" and "blood for blood" attended his funeral, which dispersed peacefully.
In Srinagar, the Kashmiri summer capital, hundreds defied strict curfew restrictions in several places and staged protests against Indian rule, witnesses said.
Riot police fired live ammunition, tear-gas and wielded batons, injuring 17 protesters and bystanders, a police officer said, asking not to be named.
He said three of the injured suffered bullet wounds and were from the same family -- a man, his daughter and daughter-in-law.
Protesters retaliated by hurling rocks and bricks, injuring three policemen.
Srinagar has been under a rolling curfew after separatists called on residents to hold protests against Indian rule.
Anti-Indian sentiments run deep in the valley, and recent protests that started on June 11 after a teenage student was killed by a police tear-gas shell, are the biggest in recent years.
Kashmir is in the grip of a 20-year-old insurgency against Indian rule that has left more than 47,000 people dead by an official count.
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