Pakistan: Military Officer Killed by Indian Fire in Kashmir
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - The Pakistani military said on Wednesday one of its officers had been killed by Indian troops firing across the disputed Kashmir border in a region where fighting broke out this week for the first time in more than a decade.
"Another soldier ... was seriously wounded due to unprovoked Indian shelling," said a Pakistani military official.
The incident follows the August 6 killing of five Indian soldiers along the so-called Line of Control that separates the two sides in the Himalayan region. India said the five were killed by Pakistani forces but Pakistan denied involvement, Reuters reported.
The nuclear-armed rivals have fought three wars since 1947, two of them over Kashmir. Both control a part of the Muslim-majority region but claim it in full.
A truce along their Kashmir border has held for nearly a decade even though it has been broken every now and then by tit-for-tat artillery fire and the occasional cross-border ambush.
Commenting on the latest incident, an Indian army official said Indian troops came under heavy mortar and light-machine gun fire from the Pakistani side on Tuesday night in the Kargil region, where the two sides fought an undeclared war in 1999.
The region had been peaceful since then until shooting began again last week.
"Under intense pressure ... we fired back," the Indian official said, adding that Indian forces later overheard Pakistani communications indicating soldiers were hurt on their side.
India has faced an insurgency in its part of Kashmir since 1989 and had long accused Pakistan of supporting the militants fighting Indian rule.
Pakistan denies arming the militants, saying that it only offers moral support to the Muslim people of Kashmir who are living under what Pakistan criticises as harsh Indian rule.
