India and Pakistan accuse each other of attacks
Aftab Ahmed and Charlotte Greenfield |
India and Pakistan are accusing each other of launching new military attacks, using drones and artillery for the third day in the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours in nearly three decades.
The old enemies have been clashing since India struck multiple locations in Pakistan on Wednesday that it said were “terrorist camps”, in retaliation for a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir in April.
Pakistan denied it was involved in the attack but both countries have exchanged cross-border fire and shelling and sent drones and missiles into each other’s airspace since then, with about four dozen people dying in the violence.
Villagers have fled border areas in both countries and many cities have been hit with blackouts, air raid warnings and panic buying of essentials.
India has suspended its Indian Premier League T20 cricket tournament after one match was stopped midway on Thursday and the floodlights switched off.
The fighting is the deadliest since a limited conflict between the two countries in Kashmir’s Kargil region in 1999.
India has targeted cities in Pakistan’s mainland provinces outside Pakistani Kashmir for the first since their full-scale war in 1971.
The Indian army said on Friday that Pakistani troops had resorted to “numerous ceasefire violations” along the countries’ de-facto border in Kashmir, a region that is divided between them but claimed in full by both.
“The drone attacks were effectively repulsed and befitting reply was given to the CFVs (ceasefire violations),” the army said, adding all “nefarious designs” would be responded to with “force”.
Pakistan Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the Indian army statement was “baseless and misleading”, and Pakistan had not undertaken any “offensive actions” targeting areas within Indian Kashmir or beyond the country’s border.
In Pakistani Kashmir, officials said heavy shelling from across the border killed five civilians, including an infant, and injured 29 in the early hours of Friday.
A “major infiltration bid” was “foiled” in Kashmir’s Samba region on Thursday night, India’s Border Security Force said, and heavy artillery shelling persisted in the Uri area on Friday, according to a security official who did not want to be named.
“Several houses caught fire and were damaged in the shelling in the Uri sector…one woman was killed and three people were injured in overnight shelling,” the official said.
India’s Directorate General of Shipping directed all ports, terminals and shipyards to increase security, amid “growing concerns regarding potential threats”.
World powers from the US to China have urged the two countries to calm tensions, and US Vice-President JD Vance on Thursday reiterated the call for de-escalation.
“We want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible. We can’t control these countries, though,” he said in an interview on Fox News.
The Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel Al-Jubeir, was scheduled to visit Pakistan on Friday, a senior Pakistani official said.
Al-Jubeir was in India on Thursday and met Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who said he “shared India’s perspectives on firmly countering terrorism” with him.
Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told parliament that Islamabad is “speaking daily” to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China about de-escalating the crisis.
The relationship between Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan has been fraught with tension since they became separate countries after attaining independence from colonial British rule in 1947.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region, has been at the heart of the hostility and they have fought two of their three wars over the region.
Reuters
