India, Pakistan exchange fire in Kashmir

Pakistan said on Thursday three of its soldiers were killed in a cross-border exchange of fire in the contested Kashmir region, but India denied that five of its troops died too.

Major general Asif Ghafoor, spokesman of Pakistan armed forces, tweeted that its three soldiers had died along with five of India’s when Indian forces opened fire along the contested border known as the Line of Control.

‘Intermittent exchange of fire continues,’ Ghafoor said.

An Indian army spokesman denied that. ‘No casualties. This assertion is wrong,’ the spokesman said.

In a statement, the Indian army said that from around 0700 local time Pakistan violated a ceasefire between the two nations.

The flare-up comes during a period of high friction between the nuclear-armed neighbours, after India revoked special status for the portion of Muslim-majority Kashmir it controls, angering Pakistan which also has claims on the region.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir and engaged in an aerial clash in February after a militant group based in Pakistan claimed responsibility for an attack on an Indian military convoy.

The UN Security Council is due to meet behind closed-doors on Friday at the request of China and Pakistan to discuss India’s decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, diplomats said.

Any action by the 15-member council is unlikely as the United States traditionally backs India and China supports Pakistan.

Thousands of people, many waving Pakistani and Kashmiri flags, protested outside the Indian High Commission in London on Thursday in support of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.

In London, protesters carried banners saying ‘Kashmir is Burning’, ‘Free Kashmir’ and ‘Modi: Make Tea Not War’, according to a Reuters reporter.

Police were keeping a small counter-demonstration apart from the main protest.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi delivered an Independence Day speech that spotlighted his decision to remove the special rights of Kashmir among the bold moves of his second term.

Meanwhile, India tightened security in disputed Kashmir, sealing off many roads with barbed wire in the main city of Srinagar, as government officials and security forces held an Independence Day parade attended by only a few local people.

Streets were empty outside the Sher-i-Kashmir cricket stadium, where the event was held, with

most residents of the city keeping indoors as a travel and communications blockade in Indian-controlled Kashmir entered its 11th day.

India’s crackdown followed a decision to strip the mainly Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir of the right to set some of its own laws, a move that has prompted sporadic protests in the past week.

A dance troupe of about 50 young men and women in colourful traditional attire was called into Srinagar from the state’s other main city of Jammu, said Archana Sharma, the group’s leader, adding that she was a television anchor.

‘We will perform the cultural dances of Jammu, Ladakh and Kashmir,’ said Sharma. ‘We will return to Jammu this evening, because communication is a big problem here.’

The city of Jammu is largely Hindu.

During Thursday’s parade, there were fewer than 500 spectators in the stadium, most of them from the security forces or government officials.

The stadium was sealed at least a week in advance for security reasons. It has a capacity of at least 2,000, a local police official said.

Surveillance helicopters and drones with cameras hovered overhead.

While a crowd of journalists from New Delhi attended, there were only a few from Kashmir, as most of Srinagar’s more than 150 newspapers have been unable to publish, hit by the travel curbs and telecoms blackout.

‘Long Live Mother India,’ chanted a group of about two dozen men from outside Kashmir, carrying large Indian flags made of cloth, as they clustered in one corner of the stadium.

Satya Pal Malik, appointed governor by New Delhi to run Jammu and Kashmir, praised India’s decision to revoke the state’s special status and hive off the Buddhist enclave of Ladakh as a separately administered area.

Speaking from a carpeted podium, he said the moves would bring prosperity and development to the region, adding that he believed Jammu and Kashmir would become a big hub for tourism and industrial employment.

Witnesses from several parts of Srinagar have reported stone-peltings each evening, and Reuters witnessed at least two of them in the past few days.

On Wednesday, Reuters reporters met four men who displayed injuries they said were caused by pellets that security forces fired in the city’s northern neighbourhood of Soura.

Many Kashmiris said India’s Independence Day was a bleak time for them.

‘It is a black day for us. Indians are free but we Kashmiris are yet to get freedom,’ said Srinagar resident Bilal Ahmad, 38. ‘If we had been independent, we would not have been caged like this.’

On an empty street a short walk from the stadium, Gulam Ahmed, a white-bearded 70-year-old Kashmiri man sat alone on a pavement outside

a shuttered shopfront, where the faint sound of the stadium dances could still be heard.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net