JuD activists blocked in bid to deliver aid to IHK

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Hundreds of supporters of Jammatud Dawa tried to cross into the Indian-held Kashmir region on Wednesday to deliver aid after weeks of violent protests there.

But the activists did not have permission to cross the contested border and were stopped in a village on the Pakistani side where they staged a protest.

“We will continue the sit-in until these essential food supplies are sent across the divide into the curfew-ridden Kashmir valley,” Hafiz Abdul Rauf, a senior official of the charity, told Reuters. The United States designated the charity a “foreign terrorist organisation” in 2010.

Forty-six people have been killed and more 5,000 wounded, including Indian security forces, since protests erupted there after the killing of a militant commander on July 8.

Most of the violence has been in the Kashmir Valley, the most populous part of Indian Kashmir, which includes the main city of Srinagar.

The JuD activists, chanting “annihilation of India”, tried to approach the LoC but were kept well back by steel barricades erected by Pakistani security forces in the village of Chakothi.

The protest came hours before Indian Interior Minister Rajnath Singh arrived in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, for regional talks.