Kashmir: Pakistan violates ceasefire along LoC in Poonch, fires at Indian Army posts

Jammu: Pakistani forces violated ceasefire by firing from automatic weapons and shelling mortars along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district on Saturday. The violation comes just days after an attack by a Pakistani special forces team that sneaked across the LoC into Poonch under heavy fire-cover and killed two jawans while losing one of their men.

The Pakistan Army initiated unprovoked and indiscriminate firing from small arms, automatic weapons and mortars on Indian Army posts along the LoC in Poonch sector, a Defence spokesman said. The Indian troops returned the fire strongly and effectively, he said. Earlier on Thursday, in the third such attack this year, a team of Pakistani special forces sneaked 600 metres across the LoC into the Poonch sector and killed two Indian jawans and lost one Border Action Team (BAT) member in retaliatory action.

The BAT comprises special forces personnel of the Pakistan Army and terrorists. It had carried out the attack on an army patrol party in the Gulpur belt of Poonch on 22 June under heavy cover fire by Pakistani troops. In the firefight, two Indian soldiers – 34-year-old Naik Jadhav Sandip of Aurangabad and 24-year-old Sepoy Mane Savan Balku of Kolhapur – were martyred.

The Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) members were armed with ‘special daggers’ and ‘headband cameras’ to mutilate and record the attack on the Indian Army patrol. Earlier, on 16 June, Pakistan violated the ceasefire by firing on forward posts along the LoC in Naushera sector of Rajouri district of J&K, killing an Indian Army jawan. There have been 19 ceasefire violations along the LoC and the international border in Jammu region in June in which one civilian was killed and seven others injured.