Tauseef Mustafa—AFP
Military official claims unprovoked firing by Indian Border Security Forces killed one civilian, injured two others.
Pakistan accused Indian military forces of killing a civilian and wounding two others in “unprovoked firing” across the border Saturday in the latest frontier flare-up between the neighbors.
A rise in cross-border skirmishes this year has raised tensions between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. The violence has been focused on Muslim-majority Kashmir, the divided Himalayan territory claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, which has witnessed some of the worst clashes between the two sides in a decade.
A Pakistani military official said a civilian was killed and two others were injured “due to unprovoked firing of heavy weapons including mortars by Indian Border Security Forces” near Sialkot.
On Thursday, Pakistan accused India of killing a paramilitary soldier in “unprovoked firing” across the border in the same region.
The incident comes just weeks after the prime ministers of the two countries pledged to restore calm along the Line of Control (LoC), the heavily militarized de facto border in Kashmir, at a meeting in New York.
A deadly flare-up along the LoC in January stalled peace talks that had only just resumed following a three-year hiatus sparked by the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, which killed 166 people. Fresh violence erupted on the LoC after five Indian soldiers were killed in a raid in August.
Delhi blamed that ambush on the Pakistan Army, but Islamabad denied the claims and has repeatedly called for restraint and dialogue.