Life derailed in Kashmir Valley
Srinagar: Normal life was derailed in the Kashmir Valley on Wednesday as separatists announced a protest march to Shopian town in solidarity with civilians killed in fighting between militants and security forces.
As train services remained suspended for a third consecutive day, the authorities closed all educational institutions and postponed exams scheduled for Wednesday amid tensions in the Valley.
Train services have also been suspended. Traffic on the otherwise busy Srinagar-Sonamarg road remained suspended for a second day on Wednesday.
The separatist Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) headed by Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik have announced a march to Shopian town to express solidarity with people there.
Authorities deployed security forces in large numbers in Srinagar, the urban hub of a dragging separatist campaign, and other places in the Kashmir Valley to maintain peace, officials said.
Twenty people, including 13 militants, four civilians and three soldiers, were killed in south Kashmir in three gunfights on Sunday.
Geelani and Mirwaiz have been placed under house arrest while Malik has been lodged in the Srinagar Central Jail to prevent their participation in protests.
Shops, public transport and other businesses remained mostly shut in Srinagar and other major towns in the Kashmir Valley on Wednesday, officials said.
Private transport, however, plied in the uptown areas and on the outskirts of Srinagar.
Meanwhile, a 23-year-old youth killed in clashes with the security forces in Kangan town was buried early on Wednesday.
A shutdown crippled normal life in Ganderbal district following the youth's death.
The District Magistrate of Ganderbal has ordered a magisterial probe into the youth's killing while police have ordered a departmental enquiry.
Clashes had broken out in Kangan on Tuesday immediately after the youth's body was taken there.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Around 70 people killed in attack on hospital in Sudan's Darfur region: WHO chief
El Fasher (AP): Some 70 people were killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the chief of the World Health Organisation said on Sunday, part of a series of attacks coming as the African nation's civil war escalated in recent days.
The attack on the Saudi Teaching Maternal Hospital, which local officials blamed on the rebel Rapid Support Forces, came as the group has seen apparent battlefield losses to the Sudanese military and allied forces under the command of army chief Gen Abdel-Fattah Burhan. That includes Burhan appearing near a burning oil refinery north of Khartoum on Saturday that his forces said they seized from the RSF.
International mediation attempts and pressure tactics, including a US assessment that the RSF and its proxies are committing genocide and sanctions targeting Burhan, have not halted the fighting.
In the Saudi hospital attack in El Fasher, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus offered the death toll in a post on the social platform X.
Officials and others in the capital of North Darfur province had cited a similar figure Saturday, but Ghebreyesus is the first international source to provide a casualty number. Reporting on Sudan is incredibly difficult given communication challenges and exaggerations by both the RSF and the Sudanese military.
“The appalling attack on Saudi Hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, led to 19 injuries and 70 deaths among patients and companions,” Ghebreyesus wrote. “At the time of the attack, the hospital was packed with patients receiving care.”
Another health facility in Al Malha also was attacked Saturday, he added.
“We continue to call for a cessation of all attacks on health care in Sudan, and to allow full access for the swift restoration of the facilities that have been damaged,” he wrote. “Above all, Sudan's people need peace. The best medicine is peace.”
Ghebreyesus did not identify who launched the attack, though local officials had blamed the RSF for the assault.
The RSF and Sudan's military began fighting each other in April 2023. Their conflict has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country.
Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll in the civil war.
_vb_20.jpeg)
