Deadly clashes in Rawalakot as Azad Kashmir votes; JAAC says many dead, police dispute toll

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir (MNTV) — Violence gripped the town of Rawalakot on Monday as supporters of a banned protest movement tried to march toward the capital of Pakistan-administered Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), leaving multiple people dead in a confrontation whose scale remains sharply contested — even as the region began voting in its general election the same day.

Clashes broke out between police and supporters of the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) as thousands of protesters, camped on the outskirts of Rawalakot, tried to enter the city on their way to Muzaffarabad.

Video circulating online, which could not be independently verified, showed police firing tear gas into the crowd.

The two sides gave irreconcilable accounts of what followed. In a statement issued after polls closed, AJK Police accused the JAAC of attacking a security post on the outskirts of Rawalakot, saying a paramilitary serviceman was killed, three police officers were wounded, and vehicles belonging to the Rangers and police were set on fire.

Police said the committee was attempting to sabotage the election through violence, and vowed the state would maintain its writ and bring those responsible to justice.

The authorities acknowledged no protester deaths.

The committee’s account could hardly have been more different. JAAC member Faheem Akber initially said that five protesters had been killed; by late Monday, senior JAAC leader Liaqat Hayat said the bodies of 18 protesters had been recovered from Rawalakot.

News agencies reporting both versions said neither could be independently verified.

Among the dead named by the committee was Usman Nazir of Rawalakot — the brother of JAAC leader Umar Nazir, who hours earlier had urged supporters to keep the march peaceful.

“We are fighting for our rights, and we will move forward peacefully,” Umar Nazir had told the crowd.

A list of 17 people identified by name and home village circulated among Kashmiris on Monday, spanning communities across Poonch and neighbouring districts — from Kotli and Pallandri to Trarkhel — while the committee put the number of bodies recovered at 18.

Accounts reaching the outside world conveyed scenes of chaos and fear.

In one message sent to MNTV from the area on Monday evening, a person describing the scene wrote that shells were being fired and people were being killed as the fighting continued.

Such testimony has become difficult to corroborate: much of AJK has been under a prolonged communications shutdown during the unrest, leaving firsthand accounts from inside the region among the few available sources of information — and, in the case of the dead, circulating lists of names among the primary ways word travels at all.

The bloodshed overshadowed the first phase of AJK’s staggered general election, held Monday in Mirpur division. The region’s chief election commissioner, Justice (retired) Ghulam Mustafa Mughal, called it the “toughest” election in the region’s history but said the remaining phases would proceed as scheduled, with Muzaffarabad division due to vote on Aug. 2.

“There have been a few incidents,” he told reporters, adding that “every party tries to exaggerate such events.”

He said a political worker was killed in Nakyal, though voting there was completed, and reported disruptions in several other constituencies, including the arrest of two presiding officers in Kotli who had allegedly taken polling material to a candidate’s home.

The JAAC, a civil-rights coalition banned by the AJK authorities last month under anti-terrorism laws, boycotted the vote.

It has led weeks of protests across the region and has increasingly focused on demanding the abolition of 12 assembly seats reserved for refugees who migrated from Indian-administered Kashmir, arguing the seats allow Pakistan’s mainstream political parties to control the formation of governments in AJK — a claim the authorities reject.

The campaign suffered a setback last month when the AJK Supreme Court ruled the seats are constitutionally protected and cannot be abolished through executive or administrative action.

The latest violence follows weeks of unrest that, by news-agency counts, has killed around 30 people — though with communications restricted and the two sides disputing nearly every figure, no independent tally has been possible.