NEW DELHI — The Indian Army deployed on the streets of the disputed region of Kashmir on Wednesday, seeking to quell angry street protests that have convulsed the valley.

The protests, aimed at forcing India to withdraw its paramilitary forces from the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley, have raged for weeks, killing at least 13 people and paralyzing life in the region, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan.

The streets of Srinagar, the state capital, were deserted as the authorities enforced a strict curfew. The army presence was light and limited to a few patrols, officials in Kashmir said.

“The army has been asked to stand by to help the civil administration,” said Taj Mohi-ud-Din, a senior minister in the state government.

Demonstrations in the streets of towns and cities across Kashmir are a regular feature of the summer months in the valley, but they have become particularly heated in recent weeks in the wake of allegations that police officers and soldiers brutalized civilians. The police and paramilitary forces have fired on groups of stone-throwing youths, and television news channels showed Indian forces firing directly into crowds of protesters.

The state government has struggled to maintain order. Kashmir’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, has called for calm but has been criticized by many analysts for taking a course that they say is too passive. Separatist leaders led huge marches in the streets of Srinagar on Tuesday, and three people were killed when paramilitary forces opened fire.

A separatist insurgency seeking to create an independent state in Kashmir has raged since 1989, killing tens of thousands of civilians, but in recent years violence in the state has sharply dropped. The armed insurgency has largely given way to one led by stone-throwing youths, which has made containing the violence much tougher for Indian security forces. Many of the recent clashes between protesters and the police have come as a result of the shooting deaths of Kashmiri youths by Indian police officers.

India’s home minister, P. Chidambaram, accused the banned Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of fomenting the violence in Kashmir, leading to worries that the protests could upset efforts to restart peace negotiations between Pakistan and India, nuclear-armed neighbors.