Pakistan protests India’s cross-border attack

Senior Indian diplomat summoned to ministry over attack which killed one Pakistani soldier.

ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office lodged a strong protest with India on Monday over an “unprovoked attack” on a Pakistani check post at the Line of Control (LoC).

According to Pakistan military, Indian troops crossed the de facto border on Sunday in the Haji Pir Sector and stormed a military check post killing one soldier and injuring another.

The Foreign Office said that it summoned a senior Indian diplomat to hand over a ‘protest note on the unprovoked Indian attack’.

“The Indian Government was strongly urged to take appropriate measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents in the future,” said a foreign office statement after the Indian Deputy High Commissioner was called to the ministry.

An Indian army spokesman in Srinagar denied the incident and said that its troops did not cross the LoC.

Colonel Brijesh Pandey accused the Pakistani military of firing mortar shells into a village in the Uri district, which faces Haji Pir in Azad Kashmir.

“At 3:15am today, Pakistani troops resorted to heavy mortar firing, targeting a village in Uri sector,” Pandey told AFP, adding that the homes of some villagers were damaged. “We retaliated with small arms and the exchange continued for over an hour,” the spokesman said.

He said no Indian troops were hurt but had no information about any Pakistani casualties.

Pakistan and India have fought wars over the disputed region of Kashmir. But relations between the two countries have improved in recent years with the nuclear-armed neighbours seeking to resolve their issues through peaceful means.

There has been a ceasefire at the LoC since 2003, but there were more than 75 ceasefire violations along the LoC in 2012, resulting in the death of eight people. Most of the violations were exchanges of fire between the two sides.