Pakistan reported that three of its soldiers died Thursday in Indian firing from across the Line of Control in Kashmir while its forces killed five Indian personnel.
New Delhi has denied any loss of its soldiers as the disputed Kashmir region remains under an unprecedented clampdown nearly two weeks after ultranationalist prime minister Narendra Modi annexed the territory with a unilateral move to end its autonomy.
Since then, the two South Asian nuclear powers have engaged in a tense diplomatic and political standoff, with the world wearily watching the unfolding crisis.
“Intermittent exchange of fire continues,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor said in a tweet.
The head of the Inter Services Public Relations department accused the Indian army of stepping up firing along the LoC as part of “efforts to divert attention from [the] precarious situation in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.”
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council will convene in New York on Friday to take up Pakistan’s request for attention to the Kashmir situation.
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodi says Pakistan expects the Council to address the plight of besieged Kashmiris.
Islamabad has appealed to the world powers to discuss the situation arising after the the right wing Hindu revivalist government of Narendra Modi violated the UN Security Council resolutions and International Law with its unilateral move which deprives Kashmiris of autonomy over their land and crushes their identity with a merger. The move will allow the Hindu majority to own houses and have settlements on the disputed territory, thereby upending the demography of the area.
The move is widely seen in Kashmir, where, according to BBC, Indian forces have fired pellet shots at protestors and left several people blind.
A file picture taken by Views and News of a poster exhibition on Kashmir at Pakistan Embassy in Washington D.C.
Kashmiris have held rallies in Washington D.C., New York and London to seek major powers’ influence in relieving the plight of Kashmiri people, who have been in lockdown with no right to freedom of movement and expression.
The valley has been cut off from rest of the world and separatist and pro-India rulers have been jailed or house arrested.
Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has likened Modi’s actions to Nazi Germans and asked the world community to save them from the BJP and RSS’s extremist ideology and violence that the militant groups perpetrate on Muslims.
The world media has closely covered the shar exacerbation of South Asian tensions with The Washington Post terming it the darkest hour of Indian democracy in a report. The BBC has reported from the ground while the Indian media is obediently complying New Delhi’s orders in its reports.
The New York Times, Bloomberg and other major outlets have also denounced Modi’s extreme measure that has pushed South Asia to the edge of another conflict.
