Indian paramilitary forces have shot dead six people protesting against an alleged incident involving troops in a religious seminary in Kashmir, police say.
Troops fired on protesters who had gathered outside a Border Security Force (BSF) station on Thursday in the district of Gool, 230 kilometres south of the main city of Srinagar, two police officers said on condition of anonymity.
"It is mayhem. Six are dead and dozens injured. The death toll could rise further," said one officer.
Protesters clashed with troops over an incident on Wednesday evening in the seminary attached to a mosque in Gool, witnesses said.
The head of the seminary, Qari Shabir, said four BSF troopers came into the seminary looking for militants, at the same time that a caretaker of the seminary was alone reciting prayers for Ramadan.
"They beat him up... That is when Abdul Lateef (the caretaker) raised an alarm and people started to assemble and the word spread," Shabir told AFP by telephone from Gool.
Other local residents said the troops had entered the mosque to complain about the loud recitation of prayers by worshippers during the holy month of Ramadan.
The angry protesters clashed outside the station on Thursday with troops who started firing, witnesses said.
"The BSF soldiers fired indiscriminately, downing protesters left, right and centre," one witness who declined to be identified told AFP by telephone from the nearby village of Dharam.
Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state and a long-running separatist insurgency has been a source of perennial tensions between residents and security forces which often spill over into violence.
About a dozen armed rebel groups have been fighting Indian forces in Kashmir since 1989 for independence or a merger with Pakistan.
The fighting has left tens of thousands, mostly civilians, dead.
Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan have each administered part of Kashmir since the partition of the subcontinent after the end of British rule in 1947.
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