Heavy Pakistani shelling left a woman dead in Poonch today after killing five Indian civilians yesterday, prompting the foreign ministry to summon Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit and protest the unprovoked ceasefire violations.
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Six civilians died on the weekend in troubled Indian Kashmir after firing and shelling by Pakistani troops from across the border, according to Indian police.
NEW DELHI:India summoned the Pakistani envoy to lodge a protest and convey anger over unprovoked firing with high calibre weapons by Pakistani troops targeting India’s civilian population.
He said Pakistani troops continued unprovoked firing on villages and Army posts along the LoC in Poonch district with 120 mm and 82 mm mortar bombs on Monday, making it the third ceasefire violation in the past 24 hours.
Calling for immediate de-escalation of tension along the borders in Jammu and Kashmir, Mufti urged the political leadership of India and Pakistan to respect and uphold the ceasefire put in place during 2003.
Ahead of the NSA-level talks between India and Pakistan, Congress on Sunday questioned whether it would serve any objective as cases of ceasefire violations have increased since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Ufa. The countries have fought two of their three wars over their competing claims to Kashmir. They said that intermittent firing is on in Balakote, Sagra and Hamirpur areas of Poonch, adding that “earlier Pakistan violated the truce by firing mortars and targeted three forward posts along the Line of Control”.
The government has taken into consideration the issue of terrorism, the firing on the border and other civilian matters like exchange of fishermen and their arrest.
Top security officials of the two countries are scheduled to meet in the Indian capital from August 23 in what Pakistan last week described as “ice breaking” talks.
Pakistan and India have been engaged in hostility over Kashmir ever since their independence from British rule and their partition in 1947.
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Poonch SSP J.S.Johar said two of the critically injured civilians were airlifted to Jammu for specialised treatment but one of them, 10-year-old Moin Khan, succumbed late in the evening, raising the death toll to five. Muslim Pakistan says it only gives moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in the face of human rights abuses by Indian forces.
