Islamabad  - Pakistan on Wednesday urged the international community to press New Delhi for "restrain" in its administered part of disputed Kashmir valley, where 20 people were killed by Indian police early this week during protests.

"We are deeply concerned over the deteriorating situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir which is resulting in loss of life and property of the Kashmiri people and violation of their human rights," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq ministry told reporters in the weekly media briefing.

He called on the United Nations and human rights organizations to take notice of the "gross violation of human rights of Kashmiri people, unwarranted violence against them and their economic blockade perpetrated by extremist elements."

India should be impressed upon "to observe restrain and rein-in the extremist elements that are seeking economic destruction of the Kashmiri people," he added.

Violent protests erupted over a month ago in Muslim-dominated Indian Kashmir when the authorities allotted government land to a Hindu temple, the Amarnath cave shrine. The order was later reversed.

But the conflict aggravated further when Hindu extremists while demanding re-allotment of the land blocked the only highway linking the valley with the rest of India.

To protest the move, Kashmiri demonstrators staged a march towards Pakistani part of Kashmir on Monday, but were halted by the Indian police. The clashes left eight people dead and thirteen more on the following day.

Pakistan and India have fought two wars on Kashmir, over which both lay claim, since their independence from British rule in 1947 and went at the brink of the third in 2002. (dpa)