SRINAGAR: He was documenting a protest by dozens of Kashmiri students confronting armed Indian government forces wearing riot gear. But when an 18-year-old was hit in the head and began bleeding profusely, the Associated Press photographer put down his camera and rushed in to help her.
"It was an instant decision, and I didn't think twice," Dar Yasin said. He explained that he was closest to the woman and so best able to help. "I gave my camera to a colleague. ... I took the injured girl in my arms."
The scene soon became chaotic. Other protesters became angry when they saw the woman bleeding and hurled stones at the police and paramilitary soldiers, who retaliated with tear gas.
Yasin carried Khushboo Jan away from the protest site in Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, and urged her anxious friends not to worry. "I told the girl protesters that I have two daughters," he said.
The effort was captured by another photographer who then helped Yasin load Jan into a car that had been pulled up by a civilian to take her to a hospital.
"When I saw Yasin helping the girl, I thought I should document it and clicked some shots," said the other photographer, Faisal Khan, from the Turkish news organization Anadolu Agency.
Yasin and Khan then resumed taking photographs of the protest. Jan received six stitches on her forehead before being sent home from the hospital later that day.
The students demonstrating Thursday had been protesting a police raid on a college less than two weeks earlier in the town of Pulwama, in the Indian-governed portion of the disputed and divided Himalayan region. Another part of Kashmir is administered by Pakistan, and both anti-India rebels and protesters often demand that the Indian portion be allowed to join Pakistan or be granted independence.
Police released a brief statement after Thursday's protest saying Jan had been hurt in a stone-throwing incident, referring to a common practice by protesters of hurling bricks and stones at police and paramilitary troops. Jan said, however, that she had been hit by a marble fired from a sling by a soldier in a nearby bunker. Marbles are often used by Indian forces as ammunition used against protesters.
"Later, my friends told me that I was rescued by some media persons," Jan told the Associated Press on Sunday, as Yasin visited her in her Srinagar home.
Tensions between Kashmiri students and Indian law enforcement have escalated since April 15, when government forces raided the college in Pulwama, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Srinagar. Hundreds of students tried to resist the raid, sparking clashes that left at least 50 students injured. Authorities have not explained what they were searching for or targeting in that raid.
On April 17, students rose up again in protests across the region that left more than 100 students and an unknown number of police officers injured. Authorities responded by closing colleges, universities and some high schools, but the protests have continued.
On Monday, as authorities ordered schools and colleges open, protests and clashes again erupted in Srinagar. Police fired tear gas and used water cannons to stop rock-throwing students from marching in the main commercial area in Srinagar.
The students were chanting slogans such as "Go India, go back" and "We want freedom." Some students were reported injured in the clashes.
Protest violence is an almost daily occurrence in Kashmir, where anti-India sentiment runs deep among the mostly Muslim population after decades of military crackdown in the mountainous territory to fight armed rebellion. The region, claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety, has sparked two of three wars between the nuclear-armed nations since 1947.
Kashmir has also seen more than 70,000 people die since 1989 in a homegrown rebellion and the ensuing Indian crackdown, which has suppressed militant groups in recent years.
AP journalist covering Kashmir protest helps injured teen
AP journalist covering Kashmir protest helps injured teen
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
