India, Pakistan continue attacks

INDIA and Pakistan accused each other of launching new military attacks yesterday, using drones and artillery for the third day in the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours in nearly three decades.

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The fighting is the deadliest since a limited conflict between the two countries in Kashmir's Kargil region in 1999. India has targeted cities in Pakistan's mainland provinces outside Pakistani Kashmir for the first since their full-scale war in 1971.

The Indian army said yesterday that Pakistani troops had resorted to “numerous cease fire violations” along the countries’ de-facto border in Kashmir, a region that is divided between them but claimed in full by both.

“The drone attacks were effectively repulsed and befitting reply was given to the CFVs (ceasefire violations),” the army said, adding that all “nefarious designs” would be responded to with “force”.

Pakistan Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the Indian army statement was “baseless and misleading”, and that Pakistan had not undertaken any “offensive actions” targeting areas within Indian Kashmir or beyond the country’s border.

In Pakistani Kashmir, officials said heavy shelling from across the border killed five civilians, including an infant, and injured 29 in the early hours of yesterday.