Fresh clashes erupted in the Pakistan-administered portion of Kashmir on Monday as supporters of a banned civil rights group tried to march into a regional capital, in the latest flare-up of violence that has left dozens dead in recent weeks.
Thousands of supporters of the group, the Joint Awami Action Committee, or J.A.A.C., had planned on marching toward Muzaffarabad, the regional capital, when clashes broke out on the outskirts of Rawalakot, a town about 20 miles from the heavily militarized de facto border dividing Kashmir, a disputed region claimed by both Pakistan and India.
The J.A.A.C. said that several of its supporters had died in clashes with the police, though the claim could not be independently verified and officials had not confirmed any deaths as of Tuesday.
Protesters in Kashmir have staged sit-ins, strikes and demonstrations since early June in the contested Himalayan region, calling for electoral reform during the regional parliamentary election that began Monday and is scheduled to unfold in three phases until Aug. 10.
J.A.A.C., a grass roots coalition of businessmen, students and civil society activists, has in the past campaigned for subsidized food prices and an end to financial advantages given to elected representatives in Kashmir. Protests also turned deadly in previous years, including in 2024 and 2025, although the current episode appears to be the deadliest since J.A.A.C.’s founding in 2023.
At least 30 people, including protesters, law enforcement personnel and bystanders, have died in clashes since early June and before Monday’s latest round of violence, according to local officials and independent estimates. Kashmir’s local government banned J.A.A.C. under antiterrorism laws days before a planned protest in June.
Umar Nazir Kashmiri, a senior J.A.A.C. leader, said in video messages on Monday that the movement was peaceful and that its leadership had instructed supporters not to carry weapons. He said the group still planned on marching to Muzaffarabad.
The police in Kashmir confirmed the clashes but did not say if there were fatalities. In a statement, they said two officers had been wounded by gunfire on Monday from what they described as “armed mobs.”
The New York Times could not independently verify the casualty figures or the sequence of events, because roads into Rawalakot, which is 40 miles away from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, are blocked and internet services across Kashmir have been suspended since June 5, severely restricting access to the area.
A senior administrative official in Rawalakot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity around the protests, said that authorities had not yet confirmed any deaths because no bodies had been received in nearby hospitals.
The J.A.A.C. began as a movement protesting rising prices and economic hardship before shifting its focus to the region’s political system this year.
It is now campaigning to abolish the allocation of 12 of Kashmir’s 45 assembly seats to refugees from India-administered Kashmir now living across Pakistan.
Defenders of the provision say that the seats give displaced Kashmiris a legitimate voice in regional affairs. But the J.A.A.C. says non-Kashmiri political parties have leveraged those seats to influence or unseat local governments, and it has called for a boycott of the election.
The unrest in Kashmir is one of many crises hitting Pakistan, a country of 250 million where the powerful military is battling two insurgencies in the southern and western provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that have killed thousands of security personnel in recent years.
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