Kashmir tensions intensify amid India, Pakistan skirmishes

Residents go on shopping at a market held on Sundays in Srinagar on August 4, 2019. The Indian military on August 4 claimed to have killed several Pakistani attackers trying to cross the de facto border in Kashmir, as tensions ratcheted up in the disputed region and sent thousands of tourists fleeing. (File/AFP)
Updated 04 August 2019
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Kashmir tensions intensify amid India, Pakistan skirmishes

  • Pakistani police say Indian firing along the Line of Control on Sunday wounded a woman as the ongoing skirmishes have spread fear in the border villages
  • The frontier residents on the Pakistani side are either moving out to safer places or have begun construction of new bunkers with some strengthening existing shelters near their homes

SRINAGAR, India: Tensions have soared along the volatile, highly militarized frontier between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir as India deployed more troops and ordered thousands of visitors out of the region.

Pakistani police say Indian firing along the Line of Control on Sunday wounded a woman as the ongoing skirmishes have spread fear in the border villages. The frontier residents on the Pakistani side are either moving out to safer places or have begun construction of new bunkers with some strengthening existing shelters near their homes.

The nuclear-armed rivals routinely blame the other for initiating border skirmishes but the latest ones come amid India’s evacuation order of tourists and Hindu pilgrims and troop buildup in its part of Kashmir.


Germany’s Merz and Ukraine’s Zelensky praise truce efforts

Updated 59 min 24 sec ago
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Germany’s Merz and Ukraine’s Zelensky praise truce efforts

  • Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin had agreed to a week-long halt on attacks

BERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday welcomed “efforts in favor of a truce,” Berlin said, after Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin had agreed to a week-long halt on attacks on Ukraine’s power grid.
Merz at the same time stressed that “the systematic and brutal destruction of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure by Russian attacks” was “still ongoing,” which he condemned “in the strongest terms,” his spokesman, Stefan Kornelius, said.