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Pakistan accuses India of killing four civilians India and Pakistan blame each other for fighting along border
(about 4 hours later)
Pakistan said four civilians had been killed and five wounded in artillery fire that struck villages near the border with India, blaming its neighbour for the casualties. India and Pakistan have traded blame for a series of firefights and shelling over the past two days along their border in the disputed Kashmir region that killed five civilians and wounded nine people.
The shelling occurred in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir and the border villages near the eastern city of Sialkot, a Pakistani army statement said. There was no immediate comment from India on the shelling. On Thursday, four people were killed and five wounded in artillery fire that struck Pakistani villages near the eastern city of Sialkot. Islamabad said India was responsible for the casualties.
Islamabad summoned India’s diplomatic envoy to its foreign office to protest over the incident, as well as over what it described as a violation of its air space the day before. India’s paramilitary Border Security Force, meanwhile, blamed Pakistan for shooting at an Indian border post and for firing mortar shells that landed in a border village on Wednesday, killing one woman and wounding four people, including a soldier at a border post.
The Pakistani military claimed to have shot down an Indian spy drone on Wednesday. India rejected the allegations, saying none of its drones “crossed into the Pakistani side.” Pakistan also claimed that an Indian spy drone had violated its airspace on Wednesday and that the Pakistani military shot it down. India’s army rejected that allegation, saying none of its drones “crossed into the Pakistani side”.
Pakistani TV showed villagers mourning their loved ones. Cameras panned onto their homes, showing pockmarked walls allegedly from the shelling. A senior officer of India’s Border Security Force said skirmishes between the two sides continued on Thursday morning and that Indian troops only responded to safeguard Indian villagers from Pakistani mortar shells.
India and Pakistan, which has fought three wars since both the countries gained independence from British rule in 1947, regularly exchange fire along the disputed border area, blaming one another for the incidents. On Thursday, both Islamabad and Delhi summoned each other’s diplomatic envoys in protest at the latest exchanges. Pakistan also denounced the alleged violation of its airspace.
India on Wednesday said Pakistani forces killed a woman on the Indian-controlled side of the border. The latest skirmishes came despite a meeting of the prime ministers of the two countries last week on the sidelines of a summit in Russia in an effort to ease tensions. India’s foreign secretary, S Jaishankar, on Thursday insisted that all firefights and mortar shelling over the past two days were initiated by Pakistani troops. He told reporters that the type of drone Pakistan claimed it had downed was not of Indian design or part of India’s arsenal.
The latest exchange of fire came despite a meeting of the two countries’ prime ministers last week on the sidelines of a summit in Russia in an effort to ease tensions.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over competing claims to Kashmir. A 2003 ceasefire has largely held despite small but regular skirmishes, which the two sides routinely blame on one another.
While the highly militarised line of control in Kashmir is guarded by the armies of India and Pakistan, each country keeps a separate paramilitary border force guarding their lower-altitude frontier defined by coils of razor wire that snake across foothills populated by ancient villages, tangled bushes and fields of rice and corn.