PAKISTAN/INDIA: Pakistan has rejected claims by the Indian army that 10 Pakistani soldiers were killed in cross-border firing in Kashmir.
"This is totally false," a military spokesman said in Islamabad yesterday. He said Indian troops started shelling villages across the Line of Control, the de facto border, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and Pakistani troops retaliated. Three civilians were injured in the Indian shelling but there were no military casualties, the spokesman said.
An Indian army spokesman, Maj R. Lal, earlier accused Pakistani troops of shelling Indian posts in the border area of Poonch, 240 km north-west of Jammu, in the Indian zone of the disputed Himalayan region. "We retaliated with heavy machine gun fire and mortar shelling," Maj Lal said, adding that 10 soldiers were killed and dozens of Pakistani bunkers were in flames.
However, a teenage boy was killed in "unprovoked" fire from Indian troops in at least three districts of Pakistani Kashmir late yesterday, officials said in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Indian troops targeted almost all border villages in Poonch district with machine guns, mortars and artillery, they said.
A 17-year-old boy was killed while an 11-year-old boy was injured in Chafar village, in Abbaspur sector, a Pakistani official said.
"Pakistani troops were responding to silence the enemy guns," an official said. "We are yet to receive reports about any losses." Shelling was also reported from the upper belt of Neelum valley north-east of Muzaffarabad, but there were no casualties.