Agencies
People living in as many as 27 villages along the Line of Control (LoC) in Nowshera sector of Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district have been asked to be ready to vacate at short notice after intermittent cross-border shelling on Wednesday and Thursday.
The LoC has been tense and on a heightened state of alert since a car suicide bomber killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers in Pulwama on February 14. The Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammed has owned responsibility for the strike.
Villagers have been asked to carry only essential belongings and shift to temporary shelters — schools and government buildings — that are beyond the arc of Pakistani guns. “Mortar shells and machine-gun fire started a day before. It wasn’t too heavy, just intermittent. We haven’t had casualties yet,” said Ramesh Choudhry, the sarpanch of Kalal, a village that hugs the LoC.
Pointing to a house damaged in the latest round of hostilities, he said, “This was hit by an 81-mm mortar shell.”
Differentiating between calibres of weapons is as important as distinguishing between a good and bad harvest for this farming community of about 830 people living along the LoC. Villagers here have vacated their homes many times in the last few years. “As many as three times in the last four years,” said Vijay Choudhury of Kalal.
While people have learnt to adapt quickly, the administration is still struggling. For instance, the temporary shelters earmarked for Kalal and its adjoining villages of Khori and Gagrote – of 3000 people in total -- have just 14 rooms and six toilets. Although the state claims to have built nearly 1,400 hardened shelters for villagers along the LoC and the International Boundary, none has built here.
On Friday morning, Rajouri deputy commissioner Mohammed Ajaz Assad visited the area. “The villagers want to stay back. We have set up camps and informed them about the evacuation plan,” he said. In the evening, there were reports of intermittent cross-border firing in Kalal and adjoining areas.
Far away from the villages along the LoC, on the Jammu-Srinagar highway where the suicide bomber struck last week, it is business as usual. Since then, the forces have moved nearly 2,000 personnel in convoys.
On Thursday, the Union home ministry released a statement saying all paramilitary personnel deployed in Jammu and Kashmir would be entitled to take commercial flights to either join duty or go on leave. The government also cleared airlifting paramilitary troopers on the Jammu-Srinagar, Srinagar-Jammu and other sectors.
A day earlier, on Wednesday, the CRPF moved 1,100 men in a convoy of 40 vehicles from Jammu to Srinagar despite the February 14 attack. “Although we can airlift men, a force cannot be scared. Importantly, one of the key duties is to keep highways open and dominate them,” said a senior CRPF officer who did not want to be named. On February 16 and 17, about 850 soldiers were moved from Srinagar to Jammu along the same highway. “Whenever required, we will keep moving soldiers,” he said. |
