A woman was killed and nine other people, including two police constables, were injured in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Monday as Indian troops resorted to unprovoked mortar shelling from across the Line of Control (LoC), officials said. The target on the last day of 2018 was Athmuqam, the otherwise rarely hit district headquarters of the picturesque Neelum Valley, located some 80 kilometres northeast of state capital Muzaffarabad.
“First they [Indians] fired some shells on Pakistan Army posts, but suddenly they started pounding civilian installations with mortar shells,” said Akhtar Ayub, an Athmuqam-based disaster risk management officer.
Ayub said Indian troops targeted the entire one-kilometre radius of Athmuqam, overlooked by Indian gun positions atop lofty mountains across the unmarked dividing line.
“The shelling was so indiscriminate that we thought they [Indians] will devastate everything existing on the ground,” said Abbas Mir, a schoolteacher, whose car’s windowpane was smashed by the splinters of a shell.
Samiya Amir, an AJK University Neelum campus student, said they were on the third floor of a building when the shelling began.
“All of us rushed to the ground floor where we remained confined over the next three hours in a state of fear and anxiety,” she added.
Same was the situation in all other educational institutions in the town, where students were trapped during the course of shelling, Ayub said.
The shelling stopped after an hour but left a 27-year-old woman dead and nine others wounded, Ayub said.
The deceased, identified as Asiya Bibi, was hit in the head by a shrapnel from a mortar shell outside her house, he said. The mother of a toddler died on the spot.
The injured were identified as Sadaf Zia, 16, Misbah Jameel, 8, Kulsoom Shafqat, 18, Zarmeen Bibi, 20, Ansar Bibi, 35, and her son Khawaja Amir, 20, Rafaqat Khan, 35, and police constables Raja Zulqarnain, 36, and Malik Sajjad, 33.
According to Saeed Qureshi, a senior officer at State Disaster Management Authority, Monday’s Indian shelling pushed the death toll in AJK in the outgoing year to 28, including 19 men and 9 women, and the number of injured to 172, including 92 men and 80 women. The shelling also left 29 houses damaged partially and completely destroyed three houses and a shop. At least 13 cattle head also perished in the violence, he said.
Published in Daily Times, January 1st 2019
