SRINAGAR, India: Eight civilians, including an Indian husband and wife and four members of a Pakistani family, were killed when Indian and Pakistani soldiers fired at border posts and villages along the highly militarized frontier in disputed Kashmir, officials said Friday. An Indian soldier was also killed in the fighting.
The cross-border firing and shelling began overnight and spread to dozens of posts in the Jammu region of the Himalayan territory, said Indian police officer S.D. Singh.
Indian paramilitary officials said their soldiers responded to Pakistani gunfire and shelling, describing it as "unprovoked and indiscriminate." The officials said the paramilitary soldier was killed by a Pakistani sniper Thursday night, leading to cross-border firing and shelling at several forward posts.
The husband and wife and two other civilians were killed on the Indian side. At least 12 civilians were also wounded and were being treated in hospitals.
A Pakistani woman, Kulsoom Hussain, and her three children were killed when a mortar fired by Indian troops from across the frontier struck their home, local police official Mohammad Amin said. The woman was making food at the time.
The exchange of fire between Pakistan and India continued for hours near Pakistan's city of Sialkot bordering Kashmir, forcing villagers to move to safer places.
In a statement, Pakistan army accused Indian troops of initiating an "unprovoked" violation of the 2003 cease-fire accord between the two countries along the frontier near Kashmir and targeting the civilian population, including four villagers who died Friday morning.
In a statement, the military said Indian fire also wounded 10 people, including three children.
It said Pakistani troops "effectively" responded and targeted the Indian posts from where the fire came.
The military said the artillery exchange was continuing. Pakistan's foreign ministry said the killed civilians were members of a family.
As in the past, each country accused the other of initiating the border skirmishes and violating the cease-fire agreement.
This year, soldiers from the two nations have engaged in fierce border skirmishes along the rugged and mountainous Line of Control, as well as a lower-altitude 200-kilometer (125-mile) boundary separating Indian-controlled Kashmir and the Pakistani province of Punjab, where Friday's fighting occurred.
Singh, the Indian officer, said authorities were evacuating civilians living near the frontier in armored vehicles. The fighting earlier this year also sent thousands of border residents to temporary shelters for days.
Pakistan's foreign ministry summoned an Indian diplomat on Friday and lodged a strong protest over the killing of civilians along the frontier.
The ministry said Indian forces have carried out more than 1,050 cease-fire violations, resulting in the deaths of 28 civilians and injuries to 117 others.
"The cease-fire violations by India are a threat to regional peace and security and may lead to a strategic miscalculation," it said in a statement.
Indian officials say Friday's killings took the death toll in such incidents to 20 civilians and 18 government troops this year. They say dozens have been injured and scores of cattle have perished.
India and Pakistan have a long history of bitter relations over Kashmir, which both claim. They have fought two of their three wars since 1947 over their competing claims to the region.
The fighting has become a predictable cycle of violence as the region convulses with decades-old animosities between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, where rebel groups demand that the territory be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training anti-India rebels and also helping them by providing gunfire as cover for incursions into the Indian side.
Pakistan denies this, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the militants and to Kashmiris who oppose Indian rule.
Rebels have been fighting Indian rule since 1989. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown.
9 dead as India, Pakistan trade fire along Kashmir border
9 dead as India, Pakistan trade fire along Kashmir border
- Eight civilians, including an Indian husband and wife and four members of a Pakistani family, were killed during an exchange of fires between Indian and Pakistani soldiers
- The cross-border firing and shelling began overnight and spread to dozens of posts in the Jammu region of the Himalayan territory
Russia sentences Briton who fought for Ukraine to 13 years in prison camp
- The jailed Briton was named as 30-year-old Hayden Davies by Russia’s Prosecutor General
- State prosecutors released a video of Davies being questioned as he stood behind bars
MOSCOW: A British man who fought for Ukraine against the Russian army has been sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security prison camp after being convicted of being a paid mercenary, Russian prosecutors said on Thursday.
The jailed Briton was named as 30-year-old Hayden Davies by Russia’s Prosecutor General which said he had been tried by a court in a part of Russian-controlled Donetsk, one of four Ukrainian regions which Moscow claimed as its own in 2022 in a move Kyiv and the West rejected an illegal land grab.
State prosecutors released a video of Davies being questioned as he stood behind bars, dressed in a black coat and with a shaven head. He says in the video that he had traveled to Ukraine to join the International Legion which paid him $400-500 per month.
The International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine is a unit of the Ukrainian military made up of foreign volunteers.
Asked if he pleaded guilty to the charge against him, Davies says “yeah” and nods his head.
It was not clear whether Davies was speaking under duress and there was no immediate comment from the British Foreign Office.
London in February said Davies was not a mercenary but a Prisoner of War entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions. It also condemned what it called Moscow’s exploitation of prisoners of war “for political and propaganda purposes.”
Russian prosecutors said on Thursday that Davies had arrived in western Ukraine in August 2024, signed a contract to fight for the International Legion, undergone military training, and then fought against the Russian army in Donetsk.
Davies had been captured by Russia in winter 2024 carrying a US-made assault rifle and ammunition, they said.
British media have reported that Davies once served in the British army and is married and originally from Southampton.
A Russian court jailed another British man, James Scott Rhys Anderson, for 19 years in March after finding him guilty of fighting for Ukraine in the Kursk region of western Russia.
