WORLD NEWS: INDIA, PAKISTAN TRADE FIRE AFTER DEADLY EXPLOSION

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Agency Report

A day after the most severe conflict between the nuclear-armed rivals in 20 years, New Delhi announced Thursday that Indian and Pakistani forces had fired at each other overnight in Kashmir.

Following days of ceaseless shooting along their border that escalated into artillery shelling, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promised to retaliate after India launched lethal missile strikes on Wednesday morning.

“We will avenge each drop of the blood of these martyrs,” Sharif said, in an address to the nation.

Two weeks after New Delhi accused Islamabad of supporting an attack on tourists in the Indian-administered portion of disputed Kashmir, which Pakistan denies, India claimed to have destroyed nine “terrorist camps” in Pakistan by “focused, measured, and non-escalatory” attacks.

Following the violence on Wednesday, there have been at least 45 recorded deaths, including children from both sides of the border.

According to Islamabad, Indian firing and strikes along the border killed 31 people.

Pakistani fire killed a soldier and 13 civilians, according to New Delhi.

Five Indian jets were downed over the border, according to Pakistan’s military, although New Delhi has not reacted to the allegations.

The largest Indian strike was on an Islamic seminary near the Punjabi city of Bahawalpur, killing 13 people according to the Pakistan military.

Madasar Choudhary, 29, described how his sister saw two children killed in Poonch, on the Indian side of the frontier on Wednesday.

“She saw two children running out of her neighbour’s house and screamed for them to get back inside,” Choudhary said, narrating her account because she was too shocked to speak.

“But shrapnel got to the children and they eventually died.”

Muhammad Riaz said he and his family had been made homeless after Indian strikes hit Muzaffarabad, the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

“There is no place to live,” he said. “There is no space at the house of our relatives. We are very upset, we have nowhere to go.”

On Wednesday night, Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry reported firing across the Line of Control, the de facto border in Kashmir and said that the armed forces had been authorised to “respond in self-defence” at a “time, place and manner of its choosing”.

India’s army on Thursday morning reported firing “small arms and artillery guns” in multiple sites overnight, adding that its soldiers had “responded proportionately”, without giving further details.

India and Pakistan have fought multiple times since the violent end of British rule in 1947, when colonial officers drew straight-line borders on maps to partition the nations, dividing communities.

Muslim-majority Kashmir claimed by both India and Pakistan has been a repeated flashpoint.

India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said the operation was New Delhi’s “right to respond” following an attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Kashmir last month, when gunmen killed 26 people, mainly Hindu men.

New Delhi blamed the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba — a UN-designated terrorist organisation, and the nations traded days of threats and diplomatic measures.

India on Thursday braced for Pakistan’s threatened retaliation.

“Border districts on high alert,” The Hindu newspaper headline read, adding that “India must be prepared for escalatory action” by Pakistan.

In an editorial, the Indian Express wrote “there is no reason to believe that the Pakistan Army has been chastened by the Indian airstrikes”, adding that Indian military experts were “aware that Pakistan’s armed forces are no pushover”.

Diplomats and world leaders have pressured both countries to step back from the brink.

AFP