Indian and Pakistani soldiers again targeted each other’s posts and villages along their volatile frontier in disputed Kashmir, killing at least six civilians and two Pakistani troops, officials said yesterday.
Tensions have been running high since Indian aircraft crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday, carrying out what India called a pre-emptive strike against militants blamed for a Feb. 14 suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops.
Pakistan retaliated, shooting down a fighter jet on Wednesday and detaining its pilot, who was returned to India on Friday in a peace gesture.
Photo: AFP
Fighting resumed overnight on Friday.
Pakistan’s military said two of its soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with Indian forces near the Line of Control that separates Kashmir between the rivals.
It marked the first fatalities for Pakistani troops since Wednesday, when tensions dramatically escalated between the nuclear-armed neighbors over Kashmir, which is split between them, but claimed by both in its entirety.
Indian police said that two siblings and their mother were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
The three died after a shell fired by Pakistani soldiers hit their home in the Poonch region near the Line of Control.
The children’s father was critically wounded.
In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, government official Umar Azam said that Indian troops with heavy weapons “indiscriminately targeted border villagers” along the Line of Control, killing a boy and wounding three other people.
Several homes were destroyed by Indian shelling, he said.
Following a lull of a few hours, shelling and firing of small arms resumed yesterday.
A Pakistani military statement said two civilians were killed and two others wounded in the fresh fighting.
The Indian army said Pakistani troops attacked Indian posts at several places along the militarized line.
Officials from both countries blamed each other for “unprovoked” violations of the 2003 ceasefire accord at several sectors along the Kashmir frontier, targeting army posts as well as villages.
On both sides of Kashmir, thousands of people have fled to government-run temporary shelters or relatives’ homes in safer areas to escape deadly and relentless shelling along the frontier.
Many of these villages dot the rugged and mountainous frontier, which is marked by razor wire, watch towers and bunkers.
“These battles are fought on our bodies, in our homes and fields, and we still don’t have anything in our hands. We are at the mercy of these soldiers,” said Mohammed Akram, a resident in the Mendhar area in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Sakina, a young woman who fled to a shelter with her two children, said the frequent shelling had made them “homeless in our own land.”
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