Police fired tear gas shells on hundreds of demonstrators in Indian Kashmir today after they burned the US flag in protest against possible US strikes on Afghanistan.
Demonstrators gathered outside the biggest mosque in the city of Srinagar, vowing to defend Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden - the prime suspect of last week's hijacked airliner attacks on the New York and Washington - is believed to be hiding.
"Afghan warriors, we are with you! Long live Afghanistan! Long live Pakistan!" they chanted as they burned and trampled upon the US flag immediately after today's prayers in the summer capital of India's Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state.
The Himalayan state, which has experienced 12 years of rebellion against Indian rule, was today gripped by a general strike that was called by guerrilla groups to express solidarity with the Afghan people.
Shops, schools and government offices were shut across a state where more than 30,000 people - separatists say 80,000 - have died in insurgency-related violence since 1989.
One guerrilla group said bin Laden was a holy warrior and vowed to repulse any retaliatory attacks on his home base.
"An attack on Afghanistan will be considered an attack on the whole Muslim world," Al-Umar Chief Commander Mushtaq Ahmad Zargar said in a statement sent to newspaper offices in Srinagar.
Commander Zargar was one of the men India freed from its prisons in exchange for the release of passengers on an Indian Airlines plane hijacked to Afghanistan by Muslim militants in December 1999.