October 18, 2001
India said Pakistani troops opened fire on Thursday at several points along a military control line dividing disputed Kashmir between the nuclear rivals but Pakistan denied its forces had attacked.
Indian defense officials said small arms fire had been going on for about six hours in the Akhnoor sector, but stressed it was a fairly routine exchange along the tense control line.
``It is not alarming, civilians in the area are going about their business,'' Brigadier P.C. Das told Reuters. Akhnoor is about 22 miles from Jammu, the winter capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
Sporadic exchange of fire was also reported from two other sectors, but Indian officials gave no details.
But a Pakistani military official denied their troops had opened fire in the Akhnoor sector on Thursday.
``There was no firing from our side,'' Brigadier Saulat Raza told Reuters in Islamabad.
Tension between the neighbors has been rising over the explosive dispute of Kashmir, despite a trip to the region by Secretary of State Colin Powell which was partly aimed at calming tempers.
Washington has urged nuclear-capable India and Pakistan to stand down and move toward dialogue as it focused on Afghanistan, whose purist Islamic rulers are sheltering the prime suspect in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.
BORDER FENCE
Another defense official said Pakistani troops opened on Wednesday evening with small arms in Rampur area of Uri sector west of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, Pakistan's Raza said soldiers from the two sides often exchanged fire on the working boundary between the rivals in Jammu and the Sialkot area because of a dispute on fencing but no Pakistani forces were firing in that area on Thursday.
``The dispute in this area is that India wants to fence it, which is against the international law,'' Raza said, explaining that there were rangers, a paramilitary force, deployed in the sector instead of regular soldiers.
India, which has threatened punitive action against Muslim militants intruding into its side of Kashmir from Pakistan, on Monday launched heavy mortar fire at Pakistani posts.
Islamabad, which denies direct involvement in the nearly 12-year revolt in Indian-controlled Kashmir, said two people were killed and more than two dozen injured in the attack by forces.
Meanwhile, violence continued in controlled Kashmir on Thursday with three Indian soldiers and three guerrillas killed in a gunbattle near Shopian, south of Srinagar.
Indian security forces killed four other guerrillas in separate encounters across the bloodied Himalayan region, officials said.
More than 30,000 people have died in the separatist revolt in Muslim-majority Kashmir since it was launched in 1989. Separatists put the toll closer 80,000.
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