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Deadly border battles between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan

INDIA AND PAKISTAN CONFLICT ERUPTS IN ‘DEADLY’ BORDER BATTLES BETWEEN NUCLEAR RIVALS, NewsWeek, BY TOM O’CONNOR ON 6/3/17 Recent clashes between neighboring rivals India and Pakistan have turned fatal, according to the Pakistani military, which said it has killed a number of Indian soldiers Saturday in a cross-border revenge attack in Kashmir.

In response to the Indian military allegedly opening fire Friday and wounding two Pakistani civilians in the sector of Nezapir, a Pakistani army spokesman, Major General Asif Ghafoor, claimed in a tweet that the force killed up to five Indian soldiers, wounding many more and destroying bunkers. India, however, denied it had suffered any military casualties and instead accused the Pakistani army of injuring a female civilian. It said Pakistan was using 82 mm and 120 mm mortars indiscriminate small arms fire along the Line of Control, which forms the disputed de facto border between the two countries, the Economic Times reported.

“A woman was injured as Pakistani troops violated ceasefire twice in two sectors of Poonch district by firing mortar shells on forward posts and civilian areas along the Line of Control, army to retaliate,” an Indian defense spokesperson said, according to Reuters.

The restive region of Jammu and Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim as their own, has long seen violent clashes between the South Asian nations that have gone to war three times since Pakistan declared independence from India as part of a U.K.-backed agreement in 1947…….

In addition to tensions mounting in the border region, both India and Pakistan have taken steps recently to revamp their nuclear weapons policies. India isbelieved by analysts to possess around 120 nuclear warheads and Pakistan around 130. Neither country is a signatory to the 1968 Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. According to a report released Friday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, India was preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal. Pakistan, which has also expressed a desire to bolster its nuclear force, celebrated Sunday its Youm-e-Takbir, or “Day of Greatness,” commemorating the nation’s first successful nuclear detonation, in 1998, Russia’s Sputnik News reported. http://www.newsweek.com/india-pakistan-conflict-erupts-deadly-border-nuclear-620295

June 5, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, weapons and war