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Indian, Pakistani Troops Exchange Fire As Leaders Hold Summits
SRINAGAR, India, July 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged fire in Kashmir for the second straight day Sunday, and 15 Muslim separatists were killed, as the two countries' leaders held historic talks in Agra.
The troops traded machine-gun fire around 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Kashmir's winter capital Jammu in the Arnia and Samba sectors of the region's disputed border, Indian defense sources told Western news agencies.
The shooting "lasted for 150 minutes and sparked panic in the area", an Indian defense source said.
No Indian troops were injured, while casualties on the Pakistani side "could not be ascertained", the source added.
Meanwhile, Indian forces shot dead 15 separatists late Saturday and Sunday, a dozen of them near the Line of Control that is the de facto border dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the army said in a statement.
Indian military escalation in the Himalayan state usually increases whenever high-level talks on the future of Kashmir take place.
On Saturday, the first day of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's three-day visit to India, 14 people were killed in the state and troops also exchanged fire on the border.
Kashmirs dominant separatist group, the Hizbul Mujahideen, said it hoped "some goodness" came from the summit, but said this would only happen if India "adopts a realistic approach".
"But if there is no change in Indian attitudes, then our 12-year-old armed struggle will continue with full force and we will shed last drop of our blood to get our birth right," declared the group's chief Syed Salahuddin.
R.P. Singh, a senior Indian Border Security Force (BSF) official, said his troops were carrying out "intense patrolling" to ward off the threat of separatist attacks.
"We are not taking any chances," he said.
Hindus and Sikhs, minority groups in Muslim-majority Kashmir, have been targeted in the past and
separatists and security forces have blamed each other for such attacks.
In March last year when then U.S. president Bill Clinton arrived in India, 36 Sikhs were killed by gunmen in Kashmir.
The Indian military heavy response to a Muslim separatist movement in Indian-held Kashmir - which New Delhi alleges is sponsored by Pakistan in the form of a "proxy war" - has claimed more than 35,000 lives since its launch in 1989.
The BSF also has to guard a 46-kilometer (28-mile) pilgrimage route from Pahalgam to the Hindu cave shrine of Amarnath in south Kashmir.
The annual month-long pilgrimage to the high-altitude shrine started on July 2 and more than 50,000 Hindus have already visited Kashmir for the pilgrimage.
In Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, BSF troops frisked pedestrians and searched vehicles for arms and ammunition at Lal Chowk, or Red Square, the city's commercial hub and the site of dozens of bomb explosions in the past.
Meanwhile, the rest of Kashmir continued to hope and pray that the summit could bring peace to the region.
"We hope the issue will be properly discussed and some forward moment in the direction of its solution made," said Shabir Shah, a separatist leader who has spent more than 20 years in different Indian jails.
"For everlasting resolution of the issue," Shah added, "Kashmiris should also be made part of the negotiations in future."
Firdous Ahmed, a Kashmiri separatist recently released from an Indian prison, said: "I woke up early this morning only to pray to Allah that India and Pakistan should strive for ending violence in Kashmir.
"There is a quest for peace everywhere... inside prisons, outside the jails, in houses, on the streets."
"Saturday's happenings in New Delhi have generated fresh hope that the nightmarish experience of ours may come to an end in the immediate future," said Manzoor Ganai, a leading lawyer in Kashmir.
"We hope the two leaders have realized that their countries cannot live in an atmosphere of perpetual hatred and suspicion," he said.
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