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India, Pakistan Trade Artillery Rounds in Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India, July 20 (News Agencies) - India and Pakistan on Friday exchanged artillery fire across their disputed border in the Kargil sector of Kashmir for the first time since a bloody conflict in the region two years ago, Indian sources said.
The exchange came just days after an Indo-Pakistan leadership summit - the first since the 1999 conflict - broke down without fulfilling its goal of a joint declaration on the disputed Himalayan state.
"The firing started at around 11:00 a.m. [12:30 a.m. EST]. Occasional shells have been coming in all afternoon," Kargil resident Ibrahim Hussain told AFP by telephone.
Indian defense sources said the firing was reported from the Channigund and Kaksar areas of Kargil, which runs along the Line of Control (LoC) - the de facto border that divides Indian- and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
In a separate incident, Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged heavy fire along the border village of Balnoi in the Poonch district of Kashmir, 140 miles northwest of Kashmir's winter capital Jammu.
Indian defense officials, who did not want to be identified, told AFP in Jammu that an Indian army patrol came under heavy fire from across the border, leaving one Indian soldier dead and two others injured.
At least seven Pakistani soldiers were seen being carried away during the gun battle, the officials said, adding that another six Pakistani soldiers were also wounded.
Meanwhile, the Pakistani military could not confirm the exchange in the Kargil sector. "We are not denying it, but it has not been confirmed," a military spokesman said in Islamabad.
The sector witnessed a 10-week border conflict two years ago, as Indian troops fought to push back an incursion by Pakistan-backed forces.
The fighting claimed 1,000 lives on both sides and led to a two-year freeze in official contacts - broken just last weekend by the Agra summit between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
"There have been no casualties on our side," said one Indian defense source, who blamed Pakistani troops for instigating the artillery exchange.
The defense source said Pakistani batteries had apparently tried to focus on a vital bridge in the sector, but missed their target.
"I thought we had finished with all of this," said shopkeeper Imran Ahmed, who reported shells exploding regularly on the surrounding hillside.
Following intense barrages in 1999, which led to a mass exodus of locals from the Kargil sector, the state government built hundreds of underground shelters.
While the Agra summit ended without agreement, both countries insisted it had not been a failure and that the rapprochement process would continue.
Meanwhile, police in Kashmir said 15 Muslim activists and a Muslim girl had been killed in the troubled state in the past 24 hours.
Indian occupation forces killed five activists in two separate encounters near the LoC in the northern district of Kupwara.
Two activists were killed in a fierce encounter with the Indian forces near Tangmarg, a mountainous area 25 miles north of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, and the residential house they were barricaded in was destroyed.
Four more activists died in three separate encounters across Kashmir, police said, while a girl was shot dead by unknown gunmen.
Indian occupation forces, in two separate encounters in Poonch, killed another four activists, police said. One security man was injured in the fighting.
Officials said Friday that 108 activists, 44 civilians and 38 "security men" were killed in the first two weeks of July.
The conflict in Indian-held Kashmir, which New Delhi alleges is sponsored by Pakistan in the form of a "proxy war", has claimed at least 35,000 lives since its launch in 1989.
Pakistan, which puts the death toll at 70,000, denies charges of "cross-border terrorism" but extends open moral and diplomatic support to the Muslim-majority Kashmiris' right to self-determination.
The debate came to a head at the failed Agra summit, after which Musharraf on Friday emphasized that the Indo-Pakistan peace process cannot be stopped as long as Kashmir is recognized as the core issue.
"If now realistically we are recognizing the centrality of the Kashmir dispute, that is essential. Let's not close our eyes to reality. We will make a new beginning," he told a press conference.
"The biggest hope that I have ... is that now I feel that nobody can stop this process from moving forward because people will not allow it to be stopped."
He said his most "vivid observation" from his trip to India earlier this week was the "people's desire and yearning" for peace, no matter what side of the border they called home.
"The resolution of the Kashmir dispute is at the heart of the Indo-Pakistan confrontation. This is the only issue blocking peace between us," he said, speaking publicly for the first time since his return from India.
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