{"id":33334,"date":"2019-02-26T22:23:37","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T22:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33334"},"modified":"2019-02-26T22:23:37","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T22:23:37","slug":"india-shelling-kills-civilians-in-pakistan-administered-kashmir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33334","title":{"rendered":"India shelling ‘kills civilians’ in Pakistan-administered Kashmir"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Four people, including two children, have been killed and seven others wounded in an exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s district of Kotli, officials said.<\/p>\n

“So far, four people have been killed in the shelling,” Nasrullah Khan, a senior hospital official told Al Jazeera by telephone on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

Khan said the dead included a woman and her two children in Nakyal along the Line of Control (LoC), the heavily-militarised\u00a0<\/span>de facto border between India and Pakistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“An Indian mortar shell hit a house in Nakyal sector along the Line of Control that killed a mother, daughter and son,” local disaster management authority official Shariq Tariq told AFP news agency.<\/p>\n

Another death was reported from Koiratta town in the semi-autonomous region, Khan said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Indian media reports<\/a>\u00a0said at least five of its soldiers were also wounded in cross-border firing along the LoC.<\/p>\n

The civilian deaths in Pakistan-administered Kashmir came as India earlier on Tuesday said it had launched air strikes near Balakot, a town 50km from the LoC<\/span> inside Pakistan’s territory.<\/p>\n

The raids followed a suicide attack<\/a> earlier this month in India-administered Kashmir<\/a>, which killed 42 Indian troopers when a rebel rammed his explosives-laden car into a paramilitary convoy.<\/p>\n

It was the deepest cross-border attack launched by India<\/a> since the last of its three wars with Pakistan in 1971,\u00a0when the two nations fought over Bangladesh’s independence.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
General view of a site after Indian warplanes dropped bombs in Pakistan’s Balakot [Inter Service Public Relation handout via Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But there were competing claims about the damage the air strikes caused.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Indian government, facing a general election in April and May, said the strikes hit a training camp belonging to the armed group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), which claimed the February 14 suicide attack.<\/p>\n

Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said “a very large number” of JeM rebels were killed, without specifying any number.<\/p>\n

“The existence of such training facilities, capable of training hundreds of jihadis, could not have functioned without the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities,” Gokhale said.<\/p>\n

Pakistan, which denies harbouring the JeM, also dismissed India’s claim,\u00a0saying the Indian aircraft had dropped their bombs in a wooded area, causing no damage or casualties.<\/p>\n

Islamabad called India’s air raids as “reckless and fictitious” and said it would respond in due course “at a time and place of its choosing”.<\/p>\n

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistan counterpart Imran Khan both summoned emergency meetings of top ministers after the attack.<\/p>\n

Khan also convened a meeting for Wednesday of the National Command Authority, which oversees command and control of the country’s nuclear arsenal, the military said.<\/p>\n

Modi had threatened a “jaw-breaking” response to the February 14 attack.<\/p>\n

But at an election rally on Tuesday, the Hindu nationalist leader did not directly mention the air strikes. He paid tribute to the military and said: “I assure the nation that the country is in safe hands.”<\/p>\n

The escalation between India and Pakistan has triggered international alarm, with China and the European Union calling for both sides to show restraint.<\/p>\n

Kashmir has been divided between Pakistan and India since the end of British colonial rule over the subcontinent in 1947. Both sides claim the territory in full.<\/p>\n

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\nFiring across the Line of Control has killed and wounded dozens of soldiers and civilians on both sides in recent years [<\/span>Al Jazeera]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four people, including two children, have been killed and seven others wounded in an exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s district of Kotli, officials said. “So far, four people have been killed in the shelling,” Nasrullah Khan, a senior hospital official told Al Jazeera by telephone on Tuesday night. Khan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":33335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}