NEW DELHI -- An artillery battle raged Saturday along the disputed border between India and Pakistan, killing several civilians and making it clear that hostilities between the two nuclear-armed nations were hardly over -- only a day after Pakistan handed over a captured Indian fighter pilot in what it called a "goodwill gesture."
At least six civilians and two soldiers were killed, according to officials on both sides.
Tensions have been running high since Indian aircraft crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday, carrying out what India called a pre-emptive strike against militants blamed for a Feb. 14 suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops. Pakistan retaliated, shooting down a fighter jet Wednesday and detaining its pilot, who was returned to India on Friday.
Fighting resumed overnight Friday. Pakistan's military said two of its soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with Indian forces near the Line of Control that separates Kashmir between the rivals.
Indian police said two siblings and their mother were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The three died after a shell fired by Pakistani soldiers hit their home in the Poonch region near the Line of Control. The children's father was critically wounded.
In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, government official Umar Azam said Indian troops with heavy weapons "indiscriminately targeted border villagers" along the Line of Control, killing a boy and wounding three other people. He said several homes were destroyed by Indian shelling.
After a lull lasting a few hours, shelling and firing of small arms resumed Saturday. A Pakistani military statement said two civilians were killed and two others were wounded in the fresh fighting. The Indian army said Pakistani troops attacked Indian posts at several places along the militarized line.
World leaders have scrambled to head off a war between India and Pakistan. The rivals have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their independence from British rule in 1947. Kashmir is split between the countries but is claimed by both in its entirety.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday that Russia had offered to serve as a mediator to ease tensions. He said Pakistan was ready to accept the offer, but he did not know whether India would agree as well.
Qureshi also said a top Saudi diplomat would soon visit Pakistan and India. Pakistani officials said China is expected to send an envoy to Pakistan and India this week.
At the same time, independent security analysts continue to question India's claims last week that it had killed "a very large number" of terrorists at a major training camp in the cross-border airstrike that set off an enormous mobilization of Indian and Pakistani forces and a cycle of military attacks.
Michael Sheldon, a researcher at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, said Saturday that after studying satellite imagery of the area in Pakistan that India had bombed, he could see "no evidence any buildings were hit." He added, "It appears to me they didn't hit their targets."
Instead, he said, all publicly available evidence and accounts from witnesses on the ground indicated that the Indian bombs had landed in an unpopulated forest and had taken out some pine trees. He set out his argument in an online article titled "Surgical Strike in Pakistan a Botched Operation?"
The administration of India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, who faces an election in a few months, had presented the airstrike as a robust response against a terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, that claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in February that killed more than 40 Indian troops.
Indian officials have declined to offer any photographs, witness accounts or other tangible evidence that their airstrike on Tuesday killed a large number of terrorists.
But they remain adamant that the Pakistani government has allowed anti-India militant groups to operate in Pakistan, which officials there deny. Indian officials have said the target of their airstrike was a hilltop training center run by Jaish-e-Mohammed near the town of Balakot in northern Pakistan.
Villagers near Balakot said the group -- which the United States considers a terrorist organization -- runs a religious school in the area and had operated a militant training camp that closed more than 10 years ago.
They told reporters that no structures were damaged during the Indian airstrike and that the only person hurt was a 62-year-old man who suffered a small cut above his eye. The villagers led reporters to several large holes in the ground in the forest, where they said the bombs fell.
Western intelligence officials say that militant groups in Pakistan still provide material support and expertise, such as bomb-making skills, to insurgents fighting Indian rule in the Indian-controlled parts of Kashmir.
Rebel groups have been fighting Indian rule since 1989 and demand that Kashmir be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
RESIDENTS FLEE
Residents near the Line of Control said the artillery battle that raged Saturday was much heavier than usual, with both sides pounding each other's positions for hours.
"The shells are landing everywhere," said Najeeb Ahmad, a primary-school teacher who lives on the Indian side of the disputed border.
Along the border, artillery exchanges break out frequently, and large rounds often sail over the troops dug in on each side and crash into nearby villages, maiming and killing civilians.
Thousands of people on both sides of Kashmir have fled to government-run temporary shelters or relatives' homes in safer areas to escape shelling along the frontier, which is marked by razor wire, watch towers and bunkers amid tangled bushes, forests and fields of rice and corn.
"These battles are fought on our bodies, in our homes and fields, and we still don't have anything in our hands. We are at the mercy of these soldiers," said Mohammed Akram, a resident in the Mendhar area in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Sakina, a young woman who fled to a shelter with her two children, said the frequent shelling had made them "homeless in our own land."
On Pakistani-administered side, many displaced families urged the international community to help resolve the issue of Kashmir so they can live peacefully.
"Whenever India fires mortars, it's we who suffer," said Mohammad Latif, a laborer who took refuge at a government building that was vacated so it could shelter displaced families.
"I don't care whether the Indian pilot is gone or not, I don't care who released him and why, but I want to know whether peace will return to us after his return to India," said Mohammad Sadiq, a shopkeeper who also was among the displaced. He said the latest tensions between Pakistan and India rose so suddenly that some people sold their sheep, cows and buffaloes at throwaway prices in his native Chikothi town.
"We did not know whether we will get any shelter and how could we take our animals" with us, he said.
A peacemaking plea urging both sides to quit fighting was published as a letter in one of India's leading newspapers and signed by more than 600 scholars, lawyers, scientists, writers and actors.
"Even a limited confrontation would resolve nothing," the letter said. "Unfortunately, the climate of jingoism that tends to develop around this sort of situation is obscuring these simple truths."
Information for this article was contributed by Jeffrey Gettleman, Hari Kumar and Sameer Yasir of The New York Times; and by Roshan Mughal, Aijaz Hussain and Munir Ahmed of The Associated Press.
A Section on 03/03/2019