SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Tens of thousands of
villagers fled their homes in Kashmir on Monday, as
Indian and Pakistani troops bombarded each other
with gunfire and mortar shells over the border
separating their portions of the disputed region. At
least nine civilians were killed.
Indian officials said the flare-up left five
villagers, including one child, dead and 35 injured
on the Indian side of the border. The Pakistani army
reported four civilians killed on its side,
including two children, and three injured.
Monday's violence — one of the worst violations of a
2003 cease-fire between India and Pakistan —
followed several meetings between the commanders of
the two countries' border forces aimed at calming
tensions. Two of the three wars between the nations
have been fought over their competing claims to
Kashmir, though the 2003 cease-fire has largely held
despite small but regular skirmishes.
Each side accused the other of firing first before
dawn, and each said its troops had only retaliated.
Both sides said the violence was happening at
several points along the border, including the
designated frontier dividing Pakistan from the
Indian-held Kashmir region of Jammu, as well as the
U.N.-monitored line of control that slices through
the mountainous region and divides it into an
Indian-controlled portion and a
Pakistan-administered territory.
"First we heard gunshots," said
Akshit Kumar, a resident of Arnia, a town in
Indian-controlled Kashmir. "But as the shelling
started, that's when we decided to flee."
On the Indian side, officials were evacuating tens
of thousands of people from Arnia and nearby
villages to underground bunkers and
government shelters.
A man said he was sleeping on the lawn outside his
home on the outskirts of Arnia when a mortar shell
landed and exploded at a nearby house, killing his
neighbor and wounding five other people.
"There is panic," said Jammu's top administrator,
Shantmanu, who goes by one name. "We're trying to
give them a sense of security and
temporary shelters."
Many saw the chaos as part of what's become a
predictable cycle of violence in a region riven by
decades-old animosities. A similar outburst of
cross-border violence in August led about 15,000
villagers to flee temporarily.
Indian officials regularly accuse Pakistan of waging
violence as a cover for separatist militants to
infiltrate into the Indian side. Pakistan staunchly
denies this, saying it offers only moral and
diplomatic support to the militants and to Kashmiris
who oppose Indian rule.
"They want to push more militants. We are keeping
the utmost vigil," Indian army spokesman
S.D. Goswami said.
Pakistan's
Foreign Affairs Office blamed India for the
violence, and said it had lodged a "strong protest."
Meanwhile, the Indian army said troops killed three
suspected militants in an early morning gunbattle
after spotting them moving through the forest in an
uninhabited area called Tandhar, farther north along
the Line of Control.
While the Line of Control is guarded by both the
Indian and Pakistani armies, each country uses a
separate paramilitary border force to guard the
lower-altitude frontier, defined by coils of razor
wire that snake across foothills marked by ancient
villages, tangled bushes and fields of rice
and corn.
___
Associated Press writer
Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to
this report.
© 2014 Hearst Communications, Inc.
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