1. Skip to content
  2. Skip to main menu
  3. Skip to more DW sites

India, Pakistan trade gunfire

August 23, 2014

Indian and Pakistani soldiers have exchanged gunfire across the border of the disputed Kashmir region. Two civilians have been killed and several others wounded on each side in the latest skirmish.

https://p.dw.com/p/1CzgM
Grenze Patrouille Indien Pakistan
Image: dapd

Dharmendra Pareek, an Indian military official, said on Saturday that Indian forces responded to Pakistani troops' "unprovoked" shelling on its border posts and several villages in the Ranbir Singh Pura region. Pareek said two Indian villagers had been killed, including an eight-year-old boy, in the Pakistani attack.

Pakistani officials claim that the Indian firing killed two civilians on its side of the border. The Islamic country accused India of starting the pre-dawn firing.

"Indian Border Security Forces again resorted to unprovoked firing in the Chaprar and Harpal sectors," a senior Pakistani military official told the news agency AFP.

A territorial dispute over the northern Kashmir region has been going on between the two nuclear-armed nations for more than six decades. Both countries claim Kashmir in its entirety and have fought two wars over the territory since their independence from Britain in 1947.

Escalation of tensions

Indian Defense Minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday that cease-fire violations by Islamabad had increased in the disupted region.

Last month, India accused the Pakistani military of killing one of its border guards and injuring seven other people by unilaterally firing along their international border.

On his trip to Kargil - a remote area of the Indian-Administered Kashmir - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused Pakistan of waging a proxy war of terrorism in the region. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of providing financial and military support to Kashmiri separatists who have been waging a deadly insurgency in the Himalayan region since 1989.

India canceled peace talks with Pakistan on August 18 after Pakistani officials met with Kashmiri separatists on the same day.

shs/ksb (AP, AFP)