Friday, October 24, 2014

Residents pay price of India-Pakistan border skirmishes

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/
Residents on border towns are paying the price of the decades-long animosity between the two neighbours with their blood.
Pakistan: India and Pakistan have once again traded fire across their borders in recent weeks, and the two nuclear rivals are putting the blame on each other for the border skirmishes.
The border town of Charwah Sector in Sialkot, which is overshadowed by Indian and Pakistani posts, feels the heat every time tensions mount between the two neighbours. Residents live in fear whenever both sides exchange fire across the border.
Farmers living just a few hundred metres away from the working boundary between India and Pakistan said they are in a constant state of fear, and blame the Indian forces for targeting their village. Residents said India fired the opening salvo as they were getting ready to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha. The attack claimed several lives and injured dozens of people.
"People vacate this town in the evening. They move to safer locations at night and come back in the morning,” said one of the town’s residents. "We feel scared when we visit our fields to harvest our crops, but we have to do it since this is our land and we don't have anywhere else to go,” said another resident.
Indian officials said Pakistan was using border fire to help infiltrate people into their territory, but that claim was denied by a senior Pakistan Rangers commander. He pointed out that Indians have erected a 3.7-metre high fence on the other side of the working boundary, installed high-resolution cameras and powerful searchlights to monitor the area and hence, prevented the possibility of any infiltration.
As India and Pakistan slug it out, one military hospital is witnessing an influx of innocent civilians who have received shrapnel injuries. While the blame game continues, residents on such border towns are paying the price of the decades-long animosity between the two countries with their blood.

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