India, Pak trade fire along LoC
Three civilians were killed yesterday in heavy exchanges of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops along their border in the south of the disputed territory of Kashmir, officials from the rival sides said.
"One young man died during the shelling. We are asking residents in the area to remain confined to their homes," Danesh Rana, IGP of Indian controlled Kashmir, told AFP.
The man was hit when a mortar bomb fired from the Pakistani side of the border landed near his house in the Pargwal sector, 340 kilometres south of Indian Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, Rana said.
The Pakistan foreign ministry accused Indian troops of "unprovoked firing" and targeting villages across the border that killed two civilians aged 14 and 22 and injured seven.
A ceasefire agreement signed by the South Asian rivals in 2003 has largely held but each regularly accuses the other of violating it. India's says Pakistan had violated the ceasefire over 1,000 times since the agreement, while Pakistan regularly registers complaints of violations by India to a UN mission which monitors the border.
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