By Staff Reporter
RAWALAKOT: At least two people were killed and several others wounded before dawn on Thursday when law enforcement personnel exchanged gunfire with protesters near Kotehri village, four kilometers outside Rawalakot, as security forces worked to clear a month-old road blockade for a convoy of food-laden vehicles.
Poonch Commissioner Sardar Waheed Khan said the food convoy, escorted by security forces, was travelling from Bagh toward Rawalakot in the early morning hours when it ran into the blockade — one of several the proscribed Joint Awami Action Committee has maintained around the city for weeks. Kotehri sits on the Bagh side of Rawalakot; the group’s main protest camp, at Eidgah Ground, lies roughly the same distance away in the opposite direction.
To reinforce the convoy, authorities dispatched a second column of law enforcement personnel from Rawalakot itself. As that column reached Kotehri, gunmen opened fire from a nearby forest. Personnel returned fire. Khan said the exchange left one or two protesters injured.
The Rawalakot column then pushed forward to Shujaabad, where it linked up with the food convoy coming from Bagh. There, the group came under fire a second time. Forces fired back again, Khan said, leaving two or three more people wounded.
Khan confirmed two fatalities from the clashes. Asked about social media reports of a possible third death, he said the administration was still trying to verify the claim.
In a written statement, the Poonch administration said armed JAAC activists had blocked every major route into Rawalakot by felling trees and dragging boulders onto the roads, choking off the supply of essential goods to the city. Security personnel, the statement said, came under heavy fire while clearing the Bagh-Rawalakot road specifically — the route was reopened afterward for food traffic.
The convoy reached Rawalakot safely at 10:30 a.m. Law enforcement personnel stayed deployed in the area until roughly 3 p.m., the commissioner said, to keep the route open for civilian traffic before withdrawing.
The gunfire came hours before JAAC core member Umar Nazir Kashmiri, addressing the group’s sit-in at Eidgah Ground, announced a new deadline for the long march on Muzaffarabad — the same march that had been halted in Rawalakot on June 10. It will resume July 15, he said, under the same operating procedures already announced, if the alliance’s charter of demands is not fully implemented by July 14.
“Once again, the JAAC seeks implementation of its charter of demands by July 14,” Kashmiri said. “If there is no progress by the evening of July 14, we will make a new announcement on July 15. That day, there will neither be this charter of demands nor any demand for the implementation of any agreement. God willing, we will leave this place with a new announcement.”
Kashmiri called on residents across Azad Jammu and Kashmir to begin preparing for the march and appealed to national and international media, political parties, and human rights organisations — both local and international — to monitor it directly. The protest campaign, he noted, has now run a full month, with sit-ins continuing at six separate locations on the outskirts of Rawalakot since June 10.
He thanked several Pakistani opposition leaders who had worked to broker a peaceful resolution but said their initiative had come too late to head off the standoff.
Kashmiri also announced an interim leadership structure for JAAC’s Muzaffarabad division, after core member Shaukat Nawaz Mir and several others from that division were arrested. Serving as interim core members, he said, will be Sahibzada Khalid Waqas, Raja Saeed Ahmed, Syed Shujaat Kazmi, Malik Adeel, Raja Iftikhar, and Advocate Ali Raza.
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