Key Kashmir bus service resumes

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A bus service connecting Indian and Pakistani-administered Kashmir has resumed a week after it was stopped due to violence in the region.

The Srinagar-Muzaffarabad service was stopped after local fruit growers tried to march to the Line of Control, the unofficial border dividing the region.

More than 20 people died after police opened fire to stop the march and break up protests across the valley.

India and Pakistan opened the service in 2005 as part of the peace process.

The service brought together families separated since independence in 1947 and the partition of Kashmir.

A total of 100 people left in four buses from Srinagar for Muzaffarabad on Thursday.

Among them 68 were residents of Pakistani-administered Kashmir who returned home after a visit to the valley.

The remaining 32 were residents of Indian-administered Kashmir.

Small scale protests took place in the predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley on Thursday in which hundreds of people demanded independence form India.

A curfew is in place in the mainly Hindu Jammu region of Kashmir, after clashes earlier in the week between protesters and police.

Hindu protesters there have agreed to hold talks with the authorities to defuse a land row, which has led to the spiralling violence.

The demonstrators were angry over the state government's reversal of a decision to grant a small piece of land to a trust running a Hindu shrine.

The original decision provoked anger in the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley where the land was located.