SRINAGAR, INDIA, NOV 09 - Pakistani artillery rained shells on the Indian side of Kashmir on Saturday, killing two Nepali porters and damaging six village homes, Indian police said. Pakistan denied it targeted any civilians.
The two men were killed as shells landed on the Indian side of the Himalayan region in the Batalik sector, some 230 kilometers (140 miles) northeast of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, local police official Asghar Ali said by telephone.
Nepali citizens come to India in large numbers through their porous border, looking for work.
In Taad village, also in a frontier area 115 kilometers (70 miles) north of Srinagar, six homes were shattered in the early morning shelling.
Indian and Pakistani forces routinely shell each other from their sides of the Line of Control that divides the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir between them.
In Islamabad, Pakistan military spokesman Gen. Shaukat Sultan denied that Pakistani forces had targeted any villages or killed civilians in the Indian part of Kashmir.
"We never target civilians," he told The Associated Press. Sultan said he was not aware of the casualties mentioned by the Indian officer.
"This is our position that we only fire after exercising maximum restraint, and even in such cases we only hit Indian military positions," he said.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars, two of them over their rival territorial claims in Kashmir. India also says Pakistan has trained men and given funds to fight the ongoing separatist Islamic insurgency in the state. Islamabad says its support is only ideological.
More than 63,000 people have been killed in the insurgency.Posted on: 2003-11-08 08:22

Post Your Comment

Please note that all the fields marked * are mandatory.

* Full Name

* Address

* Email Address

* Comment
[Some of the HTML tags you can use : <b>, <i>, <a>]

* Captcha

Get another CAPTCHA code