By Aftab Ahmed and Charlotte Greenfield
JAMMU, India/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -India and Pakistan accused each other of launching new military attacks on Friday, using drones and artillery for the third day in the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours in nearly three decades.
The old enemies have been clashing since India struck multiple locations in Pakistan on Wednesday that it said were “terrorist camps”, in retaliation for a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month.
Pakistan denied it was involved in the attack but both countries have exchanged cross-border fire and shelling and sent drones and missiles into each other’s airspace since then, with about four dozen people dying in the violence.
Villagers have fled border areas in both countries and many cities have been hit with blackouts, air raid warnings and panic buying of essentials. India has suspended its prestigious Indian Premier League T20 cricket tournament after one match was stopped midway on Thursday and the floodlights switched off.
The fighting is the deadliest since a limited conflict between the two countries in Kashmir’s Kargil region in 1999. India has targeted cities in Pakistan’s mainland provinces outside Pakistani Kashmir for the first since their full-scale war in 1971.
The Indian army said on Friday that Pakistani troops had resorted to “numerous cease fire violations” along the countries’ de-facto border in Kashmir, a region that is divided between them but claimed in full by both.
“The drone attacks were effectively repulsed and befitting reply was given to the CFVs (ceasefire violations),” the army said, adding all “nefarious designs” would be responded to with “force”.
Pakistan Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the Indian army statement was “baseless and misleading”, and that Pakistan had not undertaken any “offensive actions” targeting areas within Indian Kashmir or beyond the country’s border.
In Pakistani Kashmir, officials said heavy shelling from across the border killed five civilians, including an infant, and injured 29 in the early hours of Friday.
India’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SIRENS IN AMRITSAR
A “major infiltration bid” was “foiled” in Kashmir’s Samba region on Thursday night, India’s Border Security Force said, and heavy artillery shelling persisted in the Uri area on Friday, according to a security official who did not want to be named.
“Several houses caught fire and were damaged in the shelling in the Uri sector…one woman was killed and three people were injured in overnight shelling,” the official said.
Sirens blared for more than two hours on Friday in India’s border city of Amritsar, which houses the Golden Temple revered by Sikhs, and residents were asked to remain indoors.
Hotels reported a sharp fall in occupancy as tourists fled the city by road since the airport was closed.
“We really wanted to stay but the loud sounds, sirens, and blackouts are giving us sleepless nights. Our families back home are worried for us so we have booked a cab and are leaving,” said a British national who did not want to be named.
Other border areas also took precautionary measures on Friday, including Bhuj in Gujarat, where authorities said tourist buses had been kept on standby to evacuate residents near the Pakistan border.
Schools and coaching centres were closed in the Bikaner region of India’s desert state of Rajasthan, and residents near the Pakistan border said they were asked to move further away and consider moving in with relatives or using accommodation arranged by the government.
India’s Directorate General of Shipping directed all ports, terminals and shipyards to increase security, amid “growing concerns regarding potential threats”.
Ansab, a student at the Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agriculture, Science and Technology in India’s Jammu city, which was among the places where blasts were heard overnight, said the explosions were “more violent and louder” around 4 a.m. (2230 GMT Thursday).
“For two to three minutes it became very loud, windows started shaking as if they will break,” she said, adding the air was “smoggy” later – a mixture of smoke and fog.
World powers from the U.S. to China have urged the two countries to calm tensions, and U.S. Vice President JD Vance on Thursday reiterated the call for de-escalation.
“We want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible. We can’t control these countries, though,” he said in an interview on Fox News show “The Story with Martha MacCallum.”
The Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs Adel Al-Jubeir is also scheduled to visit Pakistan on Friday, a senior Pakistani official said.
Al-Jubeir was in India on Thursday and met Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who said he “shared India’s perspectives on firmly countering terrorism” with him.
Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told parliament that Islamabad is “speaking daily” to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China about de-escalating the crisis.
The relationship between Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan has been fraught with tension since they became separate countries after attaining independence from colonial British rule in 1947.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region, has been at the heart of the hostility and they have fought two of their three wars over the region.
(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed in Jammu, Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad, Saurabh Sharma in Amritsar, Rupam Jain in New Delhi, Ariba Shahid in Karachi, Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar,; Additional reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Writing by Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, YP Rajeshand Raju Gopalakrishnan)
