14 Pak posts smashed: BSF retaliates after 8 civilians die in heavy shelling

SRINAGAR: Active hostilities between troops along the Line of Control (LoC) and International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir further intensified on Tuesday, leaving at least eight civilians, mostly women and children, dead in villages of Samba, Jammu, Rajouri and Rajouri districts of the State.

While intensely retaliating to the “unprovoked” Pakistani firing and shelling intensely, the Border Security Force (BSF) destroyed as many as 14 posts of Pakistani Rangers along the IB in Ramgarh and Arnia sectors of Jammu frontier, its officials said.

Pakistan neither denied nor confirmed it but said that it has lodged a protest with India over what it alleged were ceasefire violations along the IB called “Working Boundary” by Islamabad and the LoC by Indian forces. Pakistan Foreign Office’s Dr Mohammad Faisal summoned Indian Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh on Tuesday and “strongly condemned the unprovoked ceasefire violations” which, it said, left six civilians including a woman dead and eight others including two women wounded on Monday.

The authorities in Jammu said that eight civilians were killed and 22 others wounded when the Pakistan troops resorted to heavy shelling on frontier villages and the Army and the BSF posts along the IB and LoC in Samba, Jammu, Poonch and Rajouri districts of Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday.

The Pakistan Rangers (Punjab) and the army used small and medium weapons and 82 and 120 mm mortar bombs to target the Indian frontier, they said. The BSF gave a “befitting calibrated retaliation” on the IB “in response to unprovoked firing and shelling of Pakistan Rangers in areas of Ramgarh and Arnia sectors since morning”, the paramilitary force°s DIG Dharmendra Pareek said.

He also said that 14 Pakistan posts were destroyed in the Indian retaliatory fire. The Army added that, at least, two Pakistani soldiers were killed in the attack.