India-Pakistan border clash: bullets kill and maim people at a rate not seen in 20 years

Scores of civilians have been killed in cross-border shelling this year, and a UN observer mission car was struck by a bullet in December

‘Most of the time we are shut up in our house. It is a war on us,’ says a resident in Neelum Valley of Pakistan-administered Kashmir

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A labourer plasters a wall during the reconstruction of a portion of the house that was damaged following a shelling between Pakistan and Indian security forces in Jura, Neelum Valley of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Photo: AFP

Published: 4:02pm, 7 Jan 2021Updated: 4:13pm, 7 Jan 2021

Shells and bullets are hurtling thicker and faster than ever between Indian and Pakistani forces across Kashmir’s ceasefire line, killing and maiming at a rate not seen in the entrenched conflict for two decades.

Zameer Ahmad was building a community bunker on the Indian side of the Himalayan region’s disputed frontier – officially known as the Line of Control (LoC) – when a sniper round fired from Pakistani-controlled territory struck the ground nearby.

Ahmad and colleague Sadakat Hussain took cover behind a wall in the village of Simari. “We finally decided to try to run but we both got hit,” the 26-year-old said.

Ahmad took a bullet in the stomach and now has to wear a colostomy bag. Hussain, 23, walks with a limp because of his wounded foot.

“It is scary, we just don’t know why the firing starts,” said Hussain, speaking during a visit to the frontier zone organised by the Indian military.

Similar stories are told on both sides of the 344-kilometre (213-mile) partition amid ever-tougher talk between the nuclear-armed neighbours, who have fought two wars over the region in the past seven decades.