Difficult to act on crowd interference during counter

Army today said the security forces would be constrained to initiate appropriate action to counter crowd interference during counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir.
"In case a crowd takes law into its hands and threatens life and property, security forces will be constrained to initiate appropriate action against them," Army said in a statement here.
The statement came in the wake of several incidents of stone pelting on security forces by locals during counter-insurgency operations.
On February 18, police had issued an advisory asking civilians, residing in a radius of two kilometres of an encounter site, to stay inside their homes and make sure their children were indoors too.

Ignoring the advisory, several incidents of crowd interference have been witnessed over the past month as a result of which several holed up militants managed to flee from besieged villages. The latest instance being the Lashker-e-Toiba Chief Abu Dujana who along with several of his associates managed to escape a cordon, though two of his group members were killed in a village in Awantipora area of Pulwama district yesterday.
Referring to another recent incident in Ashmuqam area of Anantnag district where two civilians were injured in Army firing, the Army spokesman said the security forces were forced to open "cautionary fire" to prevent any further injury, loss or damage to personnel, weapons, equipment and other government property.

He said a joint operation was launched by the Army and police on Tuesday in Aishmuqam based on information regarding presence of some militants in the Magrey Mohalla.

As the search operations were in progress, a crowd of around 1,000 people gathered at the site to disrupt the operations in clear violation of existing orders which had also been recently reiterated by the police, the spokesman said.
"Soon, some unscrupulous, rogue elements from the crowd started heavy stone pelting. Despite this provocation, the security forces exercised 'full restraint' in trying to dissuade the crowd from interfering with their operations.
"However, not paying any heed, the crowd responded by intensified stone pelting, shouting inflammatory slogans and started closing in on the forces resulting in injury to more than a dozen personnel, including a Junior Commissioned Officer and an Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police," the spokesman added.