SRINAGAR (India) - THIRTY protesters were hurt on Tuesday when police fired shots in the air and teargas during fresh protests in Indian Kashmir over the alleged rape and murder of two Muslim women, police said.

The injuries were reported in southern Pulwama district where riot police used force to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing students 'to maintain law and order', a police officer said. 'Three of the injured are in critical condition,' he said.

However, residents reached by telephone said the demonstrators were peaceful when police blocked them and chased them away by firing shots in the air and scores of teargas shells.

Residents, mostly parents of students, later attacked the district's main police station with rocks, rods and bricks, witnesses said.

Earlier in the day hundreds of Muslim students marched through the streets of Indian Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar.

Chanting 'We want freedom' and 'punish the killers', they later dispersed without violence.

Similar peaceful demonstrations were held in other towns in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, witnesses said.

Anger over the deaths last month of a 17-year-old girl and her 22-year-old sister-in-law has effectively shut down much of Kashmir valley, including Srinagar, for nearly two weeks.

Indian officials had insisted the two women had drowned, but their families accused security forces of abducting, raping and killing them. On Sunday, police said forensic tests showed they had been raped, sparking more protests.

In most of the region, schools, shops and banks opened Tuesday after separatists called for an end to their eight-day long general strike, but the women's hometown of Shopian remained shut up. Separatists have urged students to continue daytime protest marches.

Authorities have issued a ban on demonstrations in an attempt to curb the daily protests, which have so far claimed one life and left nearly 400 injured. -- AFP