Kashmiri women shout anti-Indian slogans during a protest demonstration against the arrest of a girl by paramilitary soldiers during a raid in Maloora, in the outskirts of Srinagar, India, Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007. Paramilitary soldiers fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of angry protesters demonstrating against the arrest. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
Hundreds of Kashmiris burned tires and clashed with Indian police Thursday, protesting the arrest of a woman and her teenage niece by a dreaded counter-terror unit, police and witnesses said.
Police fired tear gas into the crowd of demonstrators and beat them with batons in an attempt to clear them from roads leading into the city of Srinagar, which they had blocked with burning tires. The protesters responded by hurling stones at police.
Seven protesters were wounded, said Sajad Ahmed, a police officer in Srinagar, the capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state. No police were hurt, he said.
Protesters said a force from the Indian Special Operations Group -- a unit much feared in insurgency-wracked Kashmir -- raided several houses overnight Wednesday and took away eight people.
Among those arrested was Sauraya Akhtar, was the wife of a slain militant leader, and her 16-year-old niece, said neighbor Javed Malik.
The arrests of women provokes outrage in Muslim-majority Kashmir, where the military has been repeatedly charged with systematically using rape and sexual molestation to cower the local population.
The military has denied the allegations.
Ahmed said the two women were released later Thursday, but refused to say why they had been detained.
Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir where most people favor independence from Hindu-majority India, or a merger with Muslim Pakistan. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both in its entirety.
India has an estimated 700,000 soldiers in Kashmir, fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. In many areas, the region has the feel of an occupied country, with soldiers in full combat gear patrolling streets and frisking civilians.
More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict.