Indian army soldiers leave near a mosque at the site of a gunbattle at Meej Pampore area of Pulwama district, south of Srinagar on June 19, 2020. (Photo by AFP)

Pakistan’s military says there has been an uptick in firing across the Line of Control (LoC) - the informal border that separates Pakistan and India-controlled Kashmir - at a time of heightened diplomatic tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

Malik Mohammad Ayub Awan, deputy commissioner for a district near the LoC encompassing around 200,000 people, said six civilians had died and 13 wounded, some seriously, in the last few weeks on the border, and there had been about 45 incidents of shelling or firing.

They always target the civilian population, and because of that we can neither attend wedding parties, nor funerals. We can’t carry out any agriculture activities, or go to the mosques, or carry out ordinary daily activities, said 18-year-old student Mohammad Shahid who had been hit by a splinter a few months back, injuring his shoulder.

Reuters journalists met with locals who had been injured by Indian fire and who had lost family members. Most said they were not intimidated by Indian aggression, and were willing to cross the border and retaliate, if allowed to do so by the Pakistani government.

The Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir has been at the heart of more than 70 years of animosity since the partition of the British colony of India into the separate countries of Muslim Pakistan and majority Hindu India.

(Source: Reuters)