SRINAGAR: Thousands of villagers fled their homes in Kashmir region yesterday as Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged gunfire again, a day after the highest civilian death toll in a single day in more than a decade.
About 7,000 villagers living around the village of Arnia area in Kashmir gathered in schools after five Indian civilians were killed and dozens injured in shelling by Pakistani forces close to the border on Monday, according to Shantmanu, a government official in Jammu, a region of Kashmir.
Thousands of villagers from the border areas of Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts have fled their homes and moved into makeshift camps. Journalists who visited the border villages were told that the Pakistani firing was “very heavy”.
“No one is able to sleep, not even the children. Everyone is hiding and is scared. Bombs are falling through roofs, we can’t sleep under our own roofs, and we have to stay outside,” a villager called Swardin said.
The Indian and Pakistani militaries have traded machine-gun fire and mortar attacks for about a week, in skirmishes that cast a shadow over attempts to improve ties between the rivals.
Pakistan forces fired at 40 Indian army posts early yesterday, said Uttam Chand, an Indian police official. Indian forces retaliated with gunfire and mortar bombs, he said.
India and Pakistan continued to exchange small-arms fire in the Poonch area yesterday afternoon, according to lieutenant colonel Manish Mehta, a spokesman for the Indian army.
“What we are seeing on the border is unusual in terms of its ferocity and the sudden eruption in violence,” said Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research based in New Delhi. “This is not the average tit for tat that we have seen in the past on the border.”
Indian and Pakistani politicians accused each other’s army of unprovoked violations of their border truce, as goodwill that had built up after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May evaporated in the face of several weeks of sporadic fighting.
Sartaj Aziz, an adviser on foreign affairs to Pakistan’s prime minister, accused the Indian government of failing to prevent the violence and called for an immediate ceasefire. Aziz blamed the Indian government for calling off talks between the two countries’ top diplomats last month.
Indian Home Affairs Minister Rajnath Singh told a newspaper that Pakistan needs to learn that the newly elected Indian government will take a more aggressive approach if it comes under attack on the border. “If our civilians are killed, India has every right to retaliate,” Singh said in an interview published in the Hindustan Times.
Border Security Force officers say that Pakistani forces have intensified attacks on Indian border posts in a desperate bid to give cover to Islamist militants trying to sneak into Jammu and Kashmir. But Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah denied this, telling CNN-IBN channel that the real reason for the turmoil on the border was the internal situation in Pakistan.
“This Pakistani provocation has nothing to do with attempts to infiltrate militants into Jammu and Kashmir,” Abdullah said. “It is all due to the internal situation in Pakistan,” he said.
Abdullah said the Pakistani aggression was a major challenge to the Modi government and simply lodging a protest with Islamabad won’t do. Rajnath Singh on Monday warned Pakistan to stop violating the ceasefire, saying “times have changed in India”.
Agencies
