Conflict resumes on India-Pakistan border
Artillery guns boomed across the India-Pakistan frontier overnight after a two-week lull, killing at least one civilian and wounding another, an Indian army spokesman said today.
Shelling took place in two areas along the Line of Control – the disputed frontier between India and Pakistan – including at Kargil, the mountainous area where the two armies clashed in 1999 in a mini-war, and in the Uri sector.
“Our positions along the Kargil sector came under heavy shelling. Our forces manning the positions retaliated,” said Indian Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mukhtiyar Singh.
Across the border in Islamabad, Pakistani military authorities were not immediately available for comment.
One Indian civilian was killed and another wounded in a border village in the Kargil area, Lt Col Singh said.
The shelling is the latest flare-up of long-standing hostility between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours, which have fought three wars since gaining independence from Britain in 1947. Both countries have hundreds of thousands of troops massed at the border.
“Since 5:30 in the morning, the Pakistani Army (has been) hitting our sectors in Dras and Kargil with heavy artillery fire. Villages are being hit. We don’t understand why they are hitting villages,” Lt Col Singh said.
The shells were landing at the foot of a hill where an army base is located, he said. Some houses were on fire and an army field team was assessing the damage, he added.
Army officials say the new firing could be linked to the forthcoming elections in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where the polls are seen as crucial to ending 12 years of rebel violence in the disputed Himalayan province.
India says Pakistan is trying to sabotage the elections by sending in Islamic guerrillas to wage terrorist attacks in Indian territory. Pakistan – which calls the elections a sham – says it has nothing to do with the violence in the Kashmir Valley.
In the hinterland of the Kashmir Valley, three members of the state’s ruling National Conference party were gunned down by suspected Islamic rebels in two separate attacks overnight, police said.
India and Pakistan have rival territorial claims to the entire region of Jammu-Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in predominantly Hindu India.
More than 60,000 people – including civilians, militants and security forces - have been killed in Jammu-Kashmir since 1989, when the Islamic insurgency began.
