Woman killed and soldier injured in shelling at LoC

Srinagar: Indian and Pakistani troops on Thursday again exchanged heavy small arms and mortar fire along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district. One woman resident was killed, an off-duty soldier was critically injured and another woman was injured in the “unprovoked” Pakistani shelling, the officials said.

Defence spokesman Lt. Col. Davendra Anand said in Jammu that Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire agreement by initiating unprovoked shelling of mortars and firing by small arms in Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch early Thursday.

The shelling and firing, he said, started at 6 am and continued for one hour. “The own forces (Indian troops) retaliated strongly and effectively. Firing stopped at about 7 am,” he said.

The cross-LoC shelling and firing resumed in the same sector in the afternoon.  The Army said that the Pakistani troops again resorted to unprovoked firing and shelling at 1 pm and that the Indian troops responded to it “strongly and befittingly”.

Two hours later, the Pakistani troops resorted to heavy-shelling with mortars and firing of small arms also along Sunderbani, Mankote, Khari Karmara and Degwar areas of LoC, the Army said. “The Pakistani troops started firing and shelling in these areas at 3 pm. There also, our troops are retaliating to unprovoked ceasefire violation strongly and befittingly,” it said.

The police sources said that a woman was killed and a jawan on leave at home and another woman were injured as the Pakistani Army shelled civilian areas and forward posts in six sectors along the LoC in Poonch and neighbouring Rajouri district on Thursday. This was the seventh consecutive day that Pakistan has targeted forward posts along the LoC, the sources said.

In the Chajjala area of Mendhar (Poonch district), a woman resident identified as 32-year-old Amina Akhter, was killed after being hit by mortar shrapnel, the police said.

An off-duty soldier Lance Naik Zakir Hussain was critically wounded in the Pakistani shelling in Balnoi village of Mankote area. The police said that a shell fired by the Pakistan Army hit the residential premises of Hussain who is on leave. Mendhar’s Block Medical Officer, Dr Pervaiz Ahmad Khan, said that Hussain was referred to district hospital in “critical” condition.

Another woman resident — Naseema Akhter of Nar Mankote village — was also injured in the Pakistani shelling, the police said.

Meanwhile, schools in the five kilometres area from the LoC in Poonch, Rajouri, Samba and Jammu districts have been closed “as a precautionary measure” in view of the cross- border firing amid rising tensions between India and Pakistan.

On Wednesday, the Army had said that it destroyed, at least, five forward posts of Pakistan Army along the LoC in Poonch and neighbouring Rajouri district.  The action, it said, was taken in retaliation to “unprovoked” and “indiscriminate” firing and shelling resorted to by the Pakistani troops in violation of the November 2003 ceasefire understanding soon after the IAF struck at the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) camp at Balakot on Tuesday.

The Army had also said that it was giving a “befitting” reply to a similar pastime of the Pakistani troops in the Kamalkot area of Uri sector in the Kashmir Valley.

The Army had said that five Pakistani posts were destroyed late on Tuesday night. Defence spokesperson Lt. Col. Anand had said the firing resulted in several casualties on the Pakistani side.

Reports from across the LoC said that hundreds of families in PoK’s border belt have fled their homes to escape cross-border shelling and firing and shifted to safer areas. The Pakistani authorities had on Tuesday claimed that six civilians including two women and two children were killed in the Indian firing and shelling on civilian areas in PoK’s Nakyal sector.