BSF personnel carry out retaliatory firing along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir. BSF personnel carry out retaliatory firing along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir.

In continued retaliation to mortar shelling from across the international border in R S Pura and Arnia sectors in Jammu district on Friday, the Border Security Force (BSF) damaged four more Pakistani mortar positions, apparently resulting in heavy casualties on the opposite side.

“We have seen ambulances moving at many places across the border opposite both these sectors,” said sources. They identified some of these areas as Kundanpur, Gadyal, Haria and Jagwal.

Four mortar positions on Pakistani side — from where Rangers were firing 82 mm and 60 mm mortars — are damaged, they said. A defence position in a farmhouse behind Harpal and Jagwal village, too, has been hit, they added.

A senior BSF official said that by the intensity of their retaliation and the number of ambulances moving on the Pakistani side, the “casualty across the border appears to be very high…somewhere between 20-25”.

According to ANI, MoS PMO Jitendra Singh, after meeting the civilians injured in ceasefire violations, said, “All injured are being taken care of. For the first time, even though Pakistan is up to its mischief as it has always been, the kind of retaliatory action from Indian side was not seen for decades together.”

Meanwhile, BSF and the local police have started evacuating local residents from Korotana Khurd and Nai Basti after a 12-year-old boy, Sahil Choudhary, was killed there in mortar shelling from across the border early Friday. A woman, named Bachno Devi, also was killed at Sai Khurd as Pakistani Rangers, after a brief night-long lull, resumed mortar shelling and small arms fire on the forward Indian positions along the international border in R S Pura, Arnia and Ramgarh sectors.

Besides, several people were also injured in mortar shelling by Pakistani Rangers at Indian positions and civilian areas at many places.

Official sources said firing from across the border resumed around 6.45 am and continued along the entire border, right from R S Pura in Jammu district to Basantar river in Samba district. It soon spread to areas in Hiranagar and Kathua.

Apart from the forward Border Out Posts (BOPs), the Rangers were targeting civilian areas, causing panic among villagers living near the international border, sources told The Indian Express.

Since Wednesday night, a BSF constable and a teenaged girl were killed and seven people, including three members of a family, were injured at different locations along the border in unprovoked mortar shelling by Pak Rangers. In retaliation by the BSF, two Pakistani mortar positions were destroyed and heavy loss of life and property was inflicted across the border, BSF Director General K K Sharma said.

However, Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), an official media wing of Pakistani troops and Rangers, said two women were killed and five people injured in cross-border firing along the “working boundary”, in Sialkot and Chaprar sector. It accused Indian forces of resorting to unprovoked firing targeting civilian population in Kundanpur, Chaprar, Sialkot sector on Pakistan side.

Accusing Rangers of initiating unprovoked ceasefire violation along the border, Director General BSF K K Sharma had said that he has asked his troops to retaliate with “their full force” and “teach a lesson” to Pakistan. He had described the situation on the border as “tense”.

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