Four Indian soldiers, a BSF sub-inspector and four civilians were killed in Kashmir on Friday in the year’s deadliest exchange of cross-border shelling.
The Indian Army said “substantial damage” was inflicted on the “Pakistan army’s infrastructure and causalities”. PTI quoted Indian officials and sources as saying eight Pakistan soldiers, including two commandos, were killed.
Pakistani media reported four civilian deaths in PoK.
Civilian areas bore the brunt of the Pakistani shelling. Videos and pictures showed women and children running for cover, houses going up in flames, and the injured lying unattended with the dead. A man lay with a leg broken and his head smashed.
An Uri resident said the shelling was the worst in two decades.
“We have seen enough of it but it was like hell today. We don’t know what will happen during the night,” he said.
Sources said a war-like situation prevailed, and many border residents were mulling migration.
Police sources said Friday’s escalation was the worst after last year’s air strikes on militant camps in Balakot, Pakistan.
“Pakistan deliberately targeted civilian areas,” defence spokesperson Col Rajesh Kalia said in Srinagar.
The army released videos purportedly showing retaliatory Indian artillery fire destroying Pakistani bunkers, and claimed to have smashed Pakistani ammunition dumps, “forward operating location” dumps and militant launch pads.
Kalia said that after the troops had foiled a “suspected infiltration bid” in the Keran sector, Pakistan resorted to “unprovoked” firing from mortars and other weapons in the Dawar, Keran, Uri and Naugam sectors in Bandipora and Baramulla.
Uri in Baramulla witnessed seven deaths while two soldiers died at Gurez, Bandipora. The BSF identified the dead sub-inspector as Rakesh Doval and said a constable was injured.
