BSF hits 14 Pakistan posts after 8 civilians killed

The Border Security Force (BSF) said it hit back strongly and destroyed as many as 14 posts of Pakistan Rangers after firing from across the border left at least eight civilians dead as hostilities between facing troops along J&K borders intensified on Tuesday.

Pakistan suffered damages in Jammu’s Ramgarh and Arnia sectors, while the casualties — mostly women and children — on the Indian side were rep-orted from Samba, Jammu and Rajouri districts. The Army said that at least two Pakistani soldiers were also killed in India’s retaliation in Rajouri.

Authorities in Jammu said that eight civilians were killed and 22 others wounded when Pakistan’s troops resorted to heavy shelling on frontier villages on Tuesday. One Army jawan and a woman resident died on Monday.

“We gave a “befitting calibrated retaliation” “in response to unprovoked firing and shelling by Pakistan Rangers,” top BSF official Dharmendra Pareek said.

Reports said that hundreds of families have fled homes and relocated to safer places to escape border skirmishes. The J&K government ordered on Tuesday closure of all 174 border schools in Jammu, Kathua and Samba districts. A similar situation has emerged on the other side, reports in Pakistani media said.

The active hostilities have claimed the lives of 33 civilians and about a dozen soldiers on both sides in past two weeks. Tension and fatal border skirmishes between the two nuclear-armed countries have been rising after terrorists killed 19 Indian soldiers last month, prompting India to launch a global diplomatic offensive, and carry out anti-terror surgical strikes across the LoC.

Officials said that there have been more than sixty ceasefire violations by Pakistani troops since the surgical strikes.

Local political groups and human rights activists have expressed concern over increasing civilian casualties. The escalation in border firing comes even as Pakistan expelled on Thursday an Indian high commission official in Islamabad after a staffer of the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi was caught spying and told to leave.

Giving details of Tuesday’s incidents, officials said that four civilians including two children were killed in Ramgarh sector of Jammu district. A woman, Sultan Begam, and her daughter–in–law Maqbool Begam were killed when hit in mortar shelling in Tarkundi area of Rajouri district. Eight Indian troops have also died in the border skirmishes since

September. Pakistan on Monday said Indian troops killed four civilians on its side of the border in Punjab province.

Officials said in several instances, Pakistan Rangers and the Army resorted to firing and shelling to provide cover to infiltrating militants. They also said that on the intervening night of October 29 and 30 a group of three Pakistani militants were caught on camera while trying to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir. But the infiltration bid made in Hiranagar sector of Kathua district was foiled by alert BSF jawans.