RAWALAKOT/MUZAFFARABAD: At least five people were killed and several more wounded, some critically, in a night of clashes between security forces and supporters of a banned protest movement in the Poonch Division of Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, according to local reports.
Police and security officials gave a starkly different account of events at one of the same locations, saying it was armed activists who opened fire first, killing a paramilitary Ranger. Neither version has been officially confirmed by the district administration, and the two narratives could not be independently reconciled.
The violence, which began Monday night and continued into Tuesday morning, is the latest and bloodiest in a string of clashes that have hit the region almost daily for more than a week in continuation of a crisis that has gripped Pakistan-administered Kashmir, formally ‘Azad Jammu and Kashmir’ (AJK), since early June.
It comes a day before the region's banned Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) has vowed to launch a long march on the regional capital, Muzaffarabad, and two weeks before PaJK is due to hold Legislative Assembly elections on July 27.
The unrest has also proven politically awkward for Islamabad, which has long criticised India's handling of dissent in Indian-administered Kashmir but is now facing comparable accusations over its own conduct in the territory it controls.
Overnight violence in Baloch and Rawalakot
According to local reports attributed to local news outlets, the trouble began as security convoys moved from Kotli Sarsawa toward Baloch (also spelled Balouch), a tehsil of Sudhnoti district, where residents tried to block their path near the villages of Saran and Baloch. Forces opened fire on the crowd, the reports said.
Casualty details vary between the local accounts, in ways consistent with a still-developing story. One report named four people as killed in the initial firing - Zahid Yasin, described as a candidate for the upcoming legislative assembly elections, along with Zafar Mughal, Arslan Kabir and Ehsanullah - and listed Raqeeb Abid and a man named Aijaz as critically wounded, with Abid, who had sustained two bullet wounds, referred to a hospital in Rawalpindi.
A second account put the overall toll at six, naming five dead in Baloch with slightly different names - Zahid Mughal, Zafar Mughal, Arsalan Akbar, Raqeeb Abid and Ehsanullah - this time listing Abid among the dead rather than the injured.
A separate, apparently earlier local report on gunfire near Baloch's Kahala Chowk described a man named Zahid Mughal as severely wounded rather than killed, with five or six others also badly hurt. None of these tolls could be independently verified, and no Pakistani official had confirmed a death count as of Tuesday afternoon.
Local reports said a sixth man, Wajid Hayat of Son Topa, was shot and later died during a separate security operation against a JAAC sit-in at Rawalakot's bus terminal, He’s named in various reports as the Matial Maira, Matyal Maira or Matyalmira terminal.
Residents said forces used tear gas as well as small and heavier arms, wounding at least two more men, including one identified only as Nasir, who was taken to Pallandri hospital.
A sharply contested account
Pakistani security and police officials gave a very different version of events at that same bus terminal. Abb Takk News, a Pakistani broadcaster, reported early Tuesday that armed JAAC activists opened fire in the area and that police and paramilitary Rangers who responded to the gunfire came under attack, leaving one Ranger official dead and another wounded.
Police told the broadcaster the banned group had turned to violence after failing to draw public support and accused it of trying to manufacture unrest it could blame on the state. The report made no mention of any civilian deaths.
The competing accounts echo a pattern that has held throughout the crisis: JAAC and local residents have consistently accused security forces of firing on peaceful demonstrators, while police and government officials have just as consistently accused armed JAAC supporters of striking first.
PaJK's police chief, Liaqat Ali Malik, dismissed a batch of earlier casualty claims as "information warfare" in comments to Arab News, saying he encounters dozens of unverified reports a day.
In the aftermath of Tuesday's violence, local sources said, a curfew had been imposed in Tararkhal, with roadblocks set up across the Poonch Division and security forces patrolling towns; movement in several areas was said to be severely restricted. There was no official confirmation of the curfew or other specifics from the district administration.
An escalating week
Tuesday's clashes followed several days of mounting violence along the same corridor linking Rawalakot to outlying tehsils. On July 9, Dawn reported that a security convoy escorting food supplies into Rawalakot came under fire near Kotehri village after encountering a JAAC roadblock. Poonch commissioner Sardar Waheed Khan said forces returned fire, and local reports put the toll at two dead.
Two days later, Dawn reported one man killed and several injured when police sent to reopen a road near Arja came under attack; officials there also cited an earlier, disputed incident in which a traders' leader said he had been abducted and beaten by JAAC activists, a claim the movement has not addressed.
A publication aligned with the protest movement separately reported two further deaths in Arja on July 12, and said close to 100,000 people had gathered by July 13 across six sit-in camps on Rawalakot's outskirts, a figure that could not be independently confirmed.
How the crisis began
The unrest traces back to a dispute over 12 seats in PaJK's 45-seat Legislative Assembly reserved for refugees after the 1947 partition of the subcontinent, dislocated from the other side of Line of Control, and now live elsewhere in Pakistan. JAAC argues the arrangement lets mainstream Pakistani political parties help install governments in Muzaffarabad using votes cast by people who don't live in the territory and has demanded the seats' abolition ahead of the July 27 elections. Talks between JAAC and a federal government team broke down in late May.
On June 5, the PaJK government proscribed JAAC under the region's Anti-Terrorism Act, accusing the group of stockpiling weapons, planning attacks on security personnel and threatening to disrupt normal life in the territory. JAAC has denied the allegations and describes its campaign as peaceful.
Two days later, PaJK's Supreme Court ruled that the refugee seats are constitutionally protected and can be altered only through a legislative amendment - a decision JAAC called a serious setback to its central demand.
That ruling was followed almost immediately by the crisis's single worst day of violence. On the night of June 7, a sit-in near Rawalakot's Combined Military Hospital turned deadly. Police said armed JAAC supporters opened fire on officers and besieged the hospital, while the group said security forces had fired on a peaceful vigil. Commissioner Khan told Reuters that four police officers and a bystander were killed by "miscreants," and that six protesters died as forces responded. Dawn separately reported seven civilians and four security personnel killed. An AFP tally based on official figures put the cumulative death toll at 20 by June 12, up from an initial count of seven.
Amnesty International called JAAC's proscription "disproportionate, unlawful and a violation of the right to freedom of association" and, together with Pakistan's own Human Rights Commission, voiced alarm over the mass arrests, internet shutdown and use of lethal force that followed.
A communications blackout imposed across the region is still in effect weeks later. Verifying events on the ground in Poonch Division remains difficult. Mobile internet and, at times, broadband access have been intermittently restricted across parts of PaJK since early June, and journalists covering the crackdown have themselves faced arrest.
Casualty figures for nearly every major incident in this crisis, including Tuesday's, have varied considerably depending on whether they originate with government officials, police, JAAC's own reporting, or local residents, and few have been confirmed by neutral observers.
A movement three years in the making
The Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) emerged in 2023 as a coalition of traders, transporters, lawyers and civil society groups initially focused on electricity tariffs and wheat prices. A long march toward Muzaffarabad in May 2024 ended in violence that, by various accounts, killed between three and five people. A larger confrontation followed in late September and early October 2025, when a JAAC-led lockdown pressing a 38-point Charter of Demands led to further clashes, with reported death tolls at the time ranging from roughly seven to fifteen.
That standoff ended on October 4, 2025, when JAAC and the governments of Pakistan and PaJK signed what was described as a historic agreement, with implementation promised within 90 days.
The government has since said 37 of the 38 points were fulfilled, with only the refugee-seats question, which it says requires a constitutional amendment, left outstanding. An investigation published in June by the Kashmir Times, examining the text of the agreement clause by clause, found only a handful of commitments fully carried out, among them compensation payments to victims' families and restored open-merit university admissions, while promises covering hydropower royalties, new education boards, MRI machines, a scheduled regional bank and other infrastructure remained partly or wholly unmet.
That gap between promised and delivered reform is central to why the movement, a year after its settlement, is back in the streets. In an open letter to the Pakistani public dated June 11, JAAC framed its campaign as a response to deep inequality in how Pakistan and its territories are governed and appealed for solidarity from ordinary Pakistanis beyond Kashmir itself.
Detentions and a widening crackdown
The crackdown that followed June's ban has broadened in the weeks since. Dawn has reported that PaJK government placed 147 JAAC activists and supporters on its anti-terrorism watchlist, and The Express Tribune reported Tuesday that the territory's Education Department had suspended 20 teachers and staff in Rawalakot and Sudhnoti districts for allegedly joining the sit-ins, after compiling a list of roughly 100 government employees suspected of involvement.
In Neelum Valley, local reports say three men - Babar Lone, president of a Sharda traders' association; social activist Khalil-ur-Zaman; and social-media activist Waseem Khawaja - have been held for more than a month without public clarity on the charges against them, prompting protests along the length of the valley demanding their release or a transparent legal process.
Separately, families in Rawalakot's Hallan Cross Jandala area have accused Pakistani Rangers of looting homes during search operations, an allegation consistent with a similar claim JAAC made on July 8 that Rangers had raided a sit-in and targeted women and children. None of these specific allegations could be independently verified.
On July 10, PaJK's government formally asked Islamabad for 4,000 additional Federal Constabulary personnel and seven wings of the Pakistan Rangers, citing a deteriorating security picture in which it said four of its own personnel had been killed and 174 injured to that point.
July 15 March
JAAC has said it will launch its long march on Muzaffarabad on Wednesday, July 15, having warned that if its charter of demands was not implemented by Tuesday evening, it would issue a fresh set of demands going beyond the original charter.
Core JAAC member Umar Nazir Kashmiri has urged supporters across PaJK to prepare for the march and has appealed to national and international media and human-rights organizations to monitor it. The group has named an interim leadership team for the Muzaffarabad division after several senior figures, including Shaukat Nawaz Mir, were arrested. The PaJK government has said JAAC will be held responsible for any harm to students, after accusing the group of planning to place women and children, some carrying copies of the Quran, in front of security lines, an allegation JAAC has not responded to.
Both sides are now moving toward July 27, when PaJK is scheduled to hold legislative elections. A government spokesman said this week the vote would proceed on schedule "under all circumstances" despite the unrest, while PPP leader Raja Pervez Ashraf has said the refugee-seats dispute should ultimately be settled by the newly elected assembly rather than through street protest.
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