J&K: Army porter killed, 2 women injured in Pak firing along LoC in Uri
Srinagar: An Army porter was killed and two women were injured in Pakistani firing along the Line of Control (LoC) in Uri area of Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla district on Saturday.
The Army and police officials said that the Pakistani troops fired small arms and mortars to target the Indian forward posts and civilian areas in Uri sector and adjoining Kamalkote sub-sector in violation of the ceasefire understanding.
The Indian troops, they added, retaliated “strongly and effectively” by using similar calibre weapons. In Muzaffarabad, the officials said that the firing was initiated by the Indian troops and that the Pakistani troops “only retaliated to unprovoked Indian action.”
A 22-year-old porter Syed Abbas Hussein Shah was critically injured in the Pakistani firing. He was rushed to a nearby medical facility but he died on way, said the officials.
The victim had been engaged by the Army to work at one of its forward posts known as ‘Shankar Chowki’ along the de facto border.
The villages where the Pakistani firing and shelling wreaked havoc in the civilian population include Baaz, Madyan, Dolanja, Odoosa and Gawalta, the police officials said.
An 18-year-old resident Nasreena Banoo was injured when a mortar fired from across the LoC landed near her home in Madyan. She received splinter injured and was removed to Uri’s sub-district hospital where from she was first shifted to Baramulla’s district hospital and then to Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), said the officials.
Another woman identified as Asifa Begum received a bullet wound in Kandi Barjala village of Uri later during the day.
The exchanges which began at 11 am continued “intermittently” till the reports last came in. The Army said that the Pakistani firing and shelling was “abrupt and unprovoked”.
On October 18, eight civilians were injured in Pakistani firing in Jammu and Kashmir’s twin frontier districts of Rajouri and Poonch.
The officials had said that the Pakistani troops started targeting the Indian forward locations in Poonch’s Balakote and Mendhar and Rajouri’s Manakote areas with small arms and mortars at around 6.30 am on that day.
Some of the mortar shells landed in civilian areas, injuring, at least, eight persons, they said.
As per official statistics, the Pakistani troops have violated the November 2003 ceasefire understanding along the LoC and the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir as many as 228 times in 2016 and 506 times, so far, this year.
