NEW DELHI: India has recorded as many as 3,200 ceasefire violations along the Line of Control with

this year, with the two rival armies continuing to pound each other with heavy-caliber weapons like artillery guns and anti-tank guided missiles on a daily basis.

“The cross-border hostilities are continuing all along the 778-km LoC, with the exchange of firing particularly fierce in areas like Akhnoor, Poonch, Uri and Keran. Casualties take place on both sides. We, for instance, lost a junior commissioned officer at Rampur on December 25, while Pakistan lost two soldiers,” said a senior officer.

In yet another

(CFV), the

strongly retaliated after Pak Army opened fire in the Poonch-Rajouri sectors on Thursday night. “There are indications of a few Pak soldiers being killed…but it cannot be confirmed,” said the officer.

The virtually “bunker-to-bunker” exchange of firing across the LoC, with civilians often being caught in the middle, has further escalated after the Modi government on August 5 revoked the special status of J&K and moved to split the state into two union territories.

Of the 3,200 ceasefire violations (CFVs) already this year, which has broken all annual records since 2003, around 1,600 have taken place in the last five months. The tally was 307 in August, 292 in September, 351 in October and 304 in November, with the count in December also crossing 300-mark several days ago. In contrast, the total number of CFVs stood at 971 in 2017, and 1,629 in 2018.

“Earlier in the year, the Pak Army-ISI combine was desperate to push in as many terrorists as possible into J&K before the mountain passes got snowed under, with CFVs often being used to provide cover to infiltrators or BAT (border action team) operations. Now, though the infiltration levels have come down, the CFVs are continuing with both sides trying to dominate the LoC,” said another officer.

The Indian Army is also carrying out targeted fire assaults as well as sniping operations against forward posts of the Pak Army, which are often co-located with terror launch pads. Overall, the Army has lost 41 soldiers in CFVs on the border and counter-terrorism operations in the hinterland, while it has killed 158 terrorists in J&K this year.

As was reported earlier by TOI, Army chief General

on December 18 had said India should be prepared for escalation in the situation along the LoC in the backdrop of Pak Army continuing with its attempt to conduct BAT operations as well as indulge in heavy cross-border firing. “We have to be prepared for the spiraling of the escalatory matrix,” he said.

The intensity of the cross-border firings, with both sides often deploying heavy mortars, anti-tank guided missiles and artillery guns, had first registered a major spike after IAF fighters conducted the pre-dawn air strikes on the major

facility at Balakot in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan on February 26.