Eight civilians die in Pakistani firing on Jammu border
RAINING SHELLS As thousands of villagers flee homes, BSF retaliates by targeting 14 Pakistan posts across border
JAMMU: At least eight people, including two children, were killed in Jammu and Kashmir’s border districts on Tuesday as Pakistan pounded frontier villages and army posts with mortar shells and heavy machine gun fire, betraying a ceasefire agreement between the two neighbours.
Escalating cross-border firing and mounting civilian fatalities prompted Union home minister Rajnath Singh to hold a high-level meeting with defence minister Manohar Parrikar, army chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag, national security adviser Ajit Doval, Border Security Force (BSF) chief KK Sharma, and home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi.
Earlierintheday,hemetJammu and Kashmir governor NN Vohra, who briefed him about Pakistan’s continuing ceasefire violations.
“Pakistani guns were quiet on the international border on Monday night. But they resumed firing small arms and mortar shells at one place the following morning,” Border Security Force (BSF) Jammu frontier deputy inspector general, Dharmender Pareekh, said.
The firing intensified thereafter, although the BSF gave a “befitting reply”.
“In a calibrated response to the unprovoked firing and shelling by Pakistan Rangers in the Ramgarh and Arnia sub-sectors (of Jammu district) since morning, the BSF caused heavy damage to nearly 14 Pakistani posts,” Pareekh said.
It was not known if any Pakistani soldier or civilian were killed.
The Pakistani army has been targeting front line areas since the September 29 “surgical strikes” when Indian elite forces crossed the Line of Control, the de facto border between the two countries, and destroyed temporary militant bases.
The shelling points to plummeting bilateral ties since Pakistani militants attacked an army base in Kashmir’s Uri, killing 19 soldiers, on September 18.
The shelling caused fatalities along the international border and the LoC in Samba, Jammu, Rajouri and Poonch districts.
Nearly 18,000 villagers from the border areas have taken refuge in relief camps or gone to their relatives in safer places. Bulletproof vehicles are on standby to evacuate people during shelling.
“Evacuation has started and people have started moving to relief camps,” Samba deputy commissioner of police Sheetal Nanda said.
Rajouri deputy commissioner Shabir Ahmed Bhat said as much. “The situation is tense and people are moving out. We have sent vehicles to ferry them.”
Police said two children — aged five and seven — and a woman were killed in Ramgarh’s Rangoor Camp in Samba district, which bore the maximum brunt of the shelling.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 6 NEW DELHI: The Delhi government unveiled on Tuesday a raft of measures to control an alarming spike in pollution, shifting attention from vehicular emissions to other sources that impact air quality such as crematoriums and construction and waste disposal sites in the capital.
Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said there is no plan to reintroduce the odd-even scheme, a twice-experimented vehicle rationing project which, experts said, failed to bring down pollution levels earlier this year.
Sisodia’s announcement came after he spoke to officials from several departments amid a surge in post-Diwali pollution that has left the city-state blanketed by a thick layer of toxic smog, triggering warnings that even healthy people were at risk of respiratory problems.
Multiple monitoring agencies
PWD to sprinkle roads for 2 days so that dust settles down
61 construction sites identified where environment department will keep vigil and report if there is a spike in pollutants put the air quality index at “severe”, a level at which there is a dense concentration of particulate matter (PM 2.5), tiny particles that can pass through the body’s filters and penetrate the lungs. The level of PM 10, slightly larger in size, also remained alarming.
Experts blame PM 2.5 for a host of ailments, ranging from minor respiratory problems to reduced lung function and even cancer.
Sisodia said the government has also asked the public works department (PWD) to re-introduce within two weeks vacuum cleaning and sprinkling of water on 1,250 km of roads.
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