Indian Army accused of killing two Kashmiri women

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan: Pakistani authorities on Sunday accused the Indian Army of cross-border shelling that killed two women and wounded seven other civilians in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir.
“A 17-year-old girl who was wounded in shelling by Indian troops died at hospital, while another injured man was brought there,” local police chief Chaudhry Majid told AFP.
A local government official earlier said a woman was killed and seven were wounded in shelling by Indian troops.
“A woman was killed and at least seven other villagers were wounded when Indian forces fired shells from across the Line of Control (Loc),” said the official, Masood-ur-Rehman.
The latest death is the sixth Pakistani reported to have been killed in skirmishes across the heavily militarised de facto border in Kashmir since five Indian soldiers were ambushed and killed on August 5.
Delhi blamed the August 5 killings on the Pakistani army, but Islamabad denied any responsibility and has called for restraint and dialogue.
Shells fired by Indian troops struck villages in Nakyal sector, some 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, intermittently overnight, Rehman said.
Three houses had been damaged and one house and a car destroyed, he told AFP.
Javed Budhanwi, an MP from the area, said Indian shelling had caused panic among more than 50,000 local residents and warned that authorities may have to evacuate civilians to safer locations.
“It is difficult for people to move out at the moment as the shelling continues,” Budhanwi told AFP.
The intermittent clashes threaten to jeopardize a planned meeting between the two countries’ prime ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York next month.
A deadly flare-up along the LoC in January brought a halt to peace talks that had only just resumed following a three-year hiatus sparked by the 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed 166 people.