SRINAGAR: Six people were hurt Sunday when police fired pump action shotguns at stone-throwing protesters in Kashmir, where more than 60 people have died during anti-India protests.

Police said the incident took place in Srinigar, the main town in Indian Kashmir, when police were conducting a flag march.

"Some miscreants pelted stones heavily on the police. The police used (teargas) and pump action ammunition to chase them away," a police statement said, adding that six people were hurt. Doctors said one was in a critical condition.

Witnesses said the police used force on worshippers who were coming out of a mosque and that there was no stone pelting.

Tensions have been threatening to boil over during two months of demonstrations with 62 protesters and bystanders -- some as young as nine -- killed in the Muslim-majority region where anti-India feelings run deep.

The scenic region has been under rolling curfews to contain protests that began with the killing June 11 of a teenage student by a police teargas shell in Srinagar.

The protests have confronted India`s government with one of its biggest domestic crises as it grapples with how to calm tensions in the mountainous region once known as "Switzerland of the East".

Security forces sealed off neighbourhoods with barbed wire and put up road blockades on Sunday in Srinagar, the main city of Indian Kashmir where an insurgency against New Delhi`s rule has been underway for two decades.

Militant violence has declined sharply in the region but popular protests against New Delhi`s rule have intensified over the past two years.

Protesters opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir have clashed with police on an almost daily basis during the last two months, leading to the worst violence in the region in more than two years.

BDST: 1600 HRS, August 22, 2010