2 children die in heavy Pak shelling across LOC
SRINAGAR/JAMMU: The army gunned down five militants trying to enter Jammu and Kashmir through the disputed border, where heavy and unprovoked Pakistani shelling and gunfire killed two children and wounded a dozen frontier villagers on Monday.
A police officer in Poonch district said firing from Pakistan killed nine-year-old Israr Ahmed and Yasmin Akhtar, aged 15.
Five children were among the wounded, the youngest being five-year-old Zobia Kousar who was airlifted to a Jammu hospital.
Army spokesman Colonel NN Joshi said soldiers retaliated after “unprovoked and indiscriminate firing of small arms, automatics and mortars” from the Pakistan side in the Poonch sector that began around 7.15am and continued till afternoon.
State chief minister expressed anguish over the killing of children, saying “it is unfortunate that these teenagers became vic- tims of fire power when they were yet to understand the nuances of politics”.
A BSF soldier was wounded in Pakistani sniper fire along the Line of Control, the de-facto border between the two countries, in the state’s Rajouri sector. Bullets hit constable S Ramachari’s forearm and abdomen.
There has been a spike in ceasefire violations this year, forcing hundreds of people living along the border to flee their villages and take shelter at camps set up by the government.
The two countries had agreed in 2003 to maintain peace along the border, but violations intensified after bilateral relations plummeted in 2016.
Pakistani troops repeatedly target Indian villages and posts with heavy gunfire and mortar shells, which the military experts say is a strategy to provide cover for militants to enter the restive state fighting a decades-long insurgency.