Border villages limp to normalcy, locals return

With no hostilities between Indian and Pakistani militaries reported for nearly two days, residents of villages along the Line of Control (LoC) who had fled to safety to escape heavy cross-border shelling from Pakistan started returning to their houses on Monday after bomb squads of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) police sanitised the villages of any unexploded bombs.

- Mir Ehsan

SRINAGAR:

Till Monday afternoon, bomb squads had cleared six villages in forward areas like Uri and Tangdhar, which suffered heavily in the cross-border shelling last week. One of the villages cleared for the return of its residents is Garkote, which sits atop a mountain along the LoC overlooking Pakistani bunkers.

Zaffar Ahmad, who along with his extended family of 30 members had moved to Baramulla on May 6, a day before Indian armed forces conducted airstrikes on nine terrorist targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in the early hours of May 7, was packing his belongings to move back to his village.

"Ours is a big extended family. When we left, some took refuge in Baramulla and others travelled 105 km away to Srinagar. A day before the ceasefire (May 10) we moved into a rented house in old city Baramulla as we thought the hostilities would go on for many days," Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Uri market, said, expressing happiness that the "nightmare lasted for a brief period".