Hundreds of Hindu protesters set fire to a police post on Wednesday in Jammu city in Indian Kashmir, defying a curfew imposed to defuse protests over a land row with the region's Muslims. Hindu crowds also set fire to a government apartment in Jammu and hundreds marched to police stations and courted arrest as part of their movement to flood the region's jails in a civil disobedience campaign. At least 25 people were injured in pitched battles between police and Hindu protesters late on Tuesday. Crowds burned a truck and damaged another half dozen vehicles in Jammu, Indian Kashmir's winter capital. The land row pits Muslims in the Kashmir Valley against Hindus in Jammu, the two main regions that make up Jammu and Kashmir state. The dispute and the weeks of protests that have followed have become one of the toughest challenges facing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government since it took office in 2004. The crisis snowballed into massive protests this month, boosting separatists in Kashmir who want India's only Muslim-majority region to secede. Police have killed at least 22 Muslim protesters in Kashmir. In Hindu-majority Jammu, 10 people have been killed in protests since the agitation began nearly two months ago, police said. The dispute began after the state government promised to give land to a trust that runs Amarnath temple.
