India blocks SMS services in J&K after trucker killed

Text messaging services were blocked in Indian Kashmir just hours after being restored when a truck driver was killed by suspected militants and his vehicle set ablaze, authorities said yesterday.

Separately Indian officials said that a 24-year-old woman died in the latest exchange of artillery fire with Pakistan over their de-facto border dividing the blood-soaked Himalayan region.

Security sources said the decision to cut text messaging services was taken to reduce the ability of militants to communicate.

Indian authorities had only restored call and text services for mobile phones on Monday, following a 72-day blackout in the restive northern territory imposed after New Delhi scrapped the region's semi-autonomous status.The seven million-plus people of the Kashmir Valley are still cut off from the internet, however.

Authorities said SMS services were cut again on Monday night following the attack on the driver of a truck carrying apples in Shopian. Residents said two masked gunmen told the driver to use his truck to block the road, but it skidded and got stuck.

"The gunmen then fired at the truck and set it on fire," a witness told AFP.

Also yesterday, police arrested 13 women activists in Srinagar after they staged a protest calling for civil liberties and the release of detainees.

The women, wearing black armbands, were arrested for "breaching the peace" and for a contravening a ban in place since early August on public gatherings of more than four people, police said. They included the sister and daughter of former CM Farooq Abdullah, one of several hundred local politicians, lawyers and others in custody since early August, mostly without charge.

Abdullah, 81, was arrested in mid-September under the highly contentious Public Safety Act (PSA).