M A I N   N E W S

Pak deploys reserve brigade near LoC
From M.L. Kak
Tribune News Service

JAMMU, Sept 14 — Pakistan is said to have moved one reserve brigade from the general headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi close to the Line of Control across Uri, Tangdhar and Chhamb.

Defence experts have said that the deployment of one of the seven reserve brigades from the GHQ on the border indicated that Pakistan was aiming at kicking up a major border conflict with India.

Informed sources said that after the reserve brigade was moved close to the LoC, other units were seen carrying artillery guns, mortars, tanks and other heavy weaponry across the LoC. This step, according to the experts, had been taken to intensify firing and shelling on the Indian border villages and posts in Jammu and Kashmir.

During the past three weeks, Pakistani guns and mortars have spit fire on scores of Indian villages and posts in the Uri, Keran, Kupwara, Tangdhar, Poonch, Rajouri and Akhnoor sectors. More than 20 Indian soldiers and 15 civilians were killed in the Pak firing and shelling during the past one month. More than 25 civilian houses were partially damaged.

As a result, more than 800 families have migrated to safer places from Uri, Keran, Poonch, Rajouri and Pallanwala areas in the recent weeks. In addition, more than 10,000 farmers in the Uri, Akhnoor, R.S. Pora and Samba sectors have not been able to carry out farming.

Mr Jagdish Raj and Mr Ashok Kumar, farmers, said during the past over one year, several hundred farmers in the Pallanwala sector had not carried out any sowing and harvesting of crops. They said in the recent heavy shelling, several border villages had been deserted and big craters had been formed with mortary shelling exploding in the field.

A senior government functionary referred to today’s heavy mortar shelling and MMG firing in the Pallanwala sector where most of the shells exploded in the border village of Yogwan and said that heavy but intermittent firing from across the border had been ordered by the Pakistan army authorities to destroy mines that had been laid to obstruct infiltration.

He said some conventional infiltration routes had been mined in the past few months. Pakistan troops had started pounding these routes to destroy mines to carve out infiltration routes for the militants. He said the Akhnoor sector had witnessed repeated shelling and firing because the area falls between Rajouri and Jammu districts. Since the area that links the outer areas of Jammu district with Rajouri’s Sunderbani belt has minimum Army deployment, infiltrators had reached Kalakot, Reasi, Udhampur and Doda.

Official sources said that the Pakistani troops had resorted to heavy shelling and firing on the Indian border villages in several sectors to engage the Indian troops in the exchange of fire and allow the militants to cross into Jammu and Kashmir.

The sources said that the recent heavy Pak military build up across the LoC was aimed at mounting pressure on the Indian troops so that they could not make available additional forces for counter-insurgency operations. Also, border tension rather than conflict was being utilised by the Pakistani agencies for raking up the Kashmir issue.

Meanwhile, the Indian Defence Ministry has taken measures to meet any challenge posed by Pakistan’s heavy military build-up across the border. Defence Ministry sources said, “We have sufficient manpower and weaponry to meet any threat from across the border.”

Lashkar’s warning to USA

ISLAMABAD, Sept 14 (Reuters) — The Lashkar-e-Toiba has said it would keep up suicide missions against Indian forces in Kashmir and warned the USA not to declare it a terrorist organisation.

Lashkar-e-Toiba group chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed told a news conference the suicide missions started last year to hit Indian military installations had been a success.

“We suffer minimum losses in fidai missions against the enemy’s maximum losses as most of our fighters return alive (from operations),’’ he said.