The summer capital of Indian Kashmir was shut down today by a one-day strike in protest at last week's revenge killings of Muslims in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
The strike - called by over a dozen trade, transport, industry and tourism groups - closed down shops, offices and schools in Srinagar. Streets were virtually empty of traffic in the city of more than a million people.
More than 600 people, believed to be mainly Muslims, died in Gujarat in communal rioting triggered by a Muslim attack on a train carrying Hindu activists on February 27th, which killed 58.
"These gory and ignominious incidents call for a struggle against the perpetrators," said Ms Aasiya Andrabi, head of leading radical female separatist group Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of Faith).
"The worst part was the impunity with which Muslim women were targeted by the rioters," she said in a statement. "It has bruised the hearts of Muslims all over the world in general and those of Indian Muslims in particular".
Muslim militant groups in Kashmir - India's only Muslim-majority state - have seized on the sectarian violence as a justification for their armed separatist campaign.
Several groups claim the Hindu-Muslim clashes in Gujarat prove that Muslims are unwanted and unsafe in overwhelmingly Hindu India.
AFP