Fighting intensifies in Kashmir
SHELLING and gunfire intensified on Wednesday on the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region, killing nine civilians on a bus a day after the Indian army promised retribution for what it said was the killing of three of its soldiers.
Pakistan said Indian troops fired on a bus in the Neelam Valley on Pakistan’s side of the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing the nine passengers and seriously wounding nine others. The Indian military also fired on rescue workers in an ambulance trying to reach the wounded, Pakistan said.
In other violence reported on Wednesday, the Indian military also killed three Pakistani soldiers, including a captain, Pakistan said, and Pakistani forces retaliated, killing seven Indian soldiers. A high-level Pakistani diplomat, Deputy High Commissioner Syed Haider Shah, called the violence “a serious escalation of the situation” and a “grave breach of international and humanitarian law”.
Brigadier PS Gotra of the Indian army’s northern command defended India’s actions but did not comment on Pakistan’s allegations that Indian forces had targeted civilians and fired on an ambulance.
“It was a proper fire assault from our side as a retribution of yesterday’s incident,” said Gotra, referring to the killing of three Indian soldiers on Tuesday. He denied any Indian soldiers had been killed on Wednesday.
Exchanges of gunfire along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir have been unrelenting in recent months, despite a ceasefire agreement that was signed in 2003. The violence was amplified on Wednesday, with Pakistan asserting that civilians had been killed. Exchanges of fire took place at more than a dozen locations, Gotra said.
The Indian army, on its official Twitter site, said the directors general of military operations of the two sides held hotline talks on Wednesday evening at Pakistan’s request.
Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan’s director general of military operations, said that in the conversation he complained that targeting civilians was “highly unprofessional and unethical”.
“Pakistan reserves the right to respond at the time and the place of our choosing,” Mirza said.
His Indian counterpart, Lieutanant Genenral Ranbir Singh, said he “expressed grief ” about the civilian casualties on the Pakistani side but asserted that his military had targeted only locations where ceasefire violations against India were being initiated. He complained of the mutilation of Indian soldiers by militants believed to have come across the border from Pakistan.
On Tuesday, the Indian army said that three of its soldiers had been killed on the border and that one of the bodies had been mutilated.
The army promised to retaliate for “this cowardly act”. In past statements, mutilation has referred to beheading; it was the second time in recent weeks that an Indian serviceman’s body had been reported to have been mutilated.
Gotra said on Tuesday that it was unclear whether the soldiers had been killed by the Pakistani army, militants or a combination of the two.
Tensions between India and Pakistan have intensified since September, when militants killed 19 Indian soldiers at an army base in the border area. India said the militants had crossed over from Pakistan, and it announced a few days later that its army had conducted “surgical strikes” on militant bases along the Line of Control.
In a statement on Wednesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan complained that “India has failed to comprehend the gravity of the situation”.
Shah, Pakistan’s deputy high commissioner, said over 50 Pakistani civilians, including women and children, had been killed in recent violations of the truce. At least a dozen Indian civilians have been killed, said an official with the Indian border security force.