Pakistani activists from the Shabab-e-Milli party torch Indian flags during a protest against cross-border fire from India along the India-Pakistan Line of Control in Peshawar yesterday.

Agencies /Islamabad

At least six Pakistani civilians killed and 48 others were injured as mortar shells fired from the Indian side landed in different areas of Sialkot, a district in Pakistan eastern Punjab province yesterday morning, Dunya News reported.
A child and woman were among those killed. Residents were quoted as saying Indian troops fired mortars into the Pakistani border villages. The injured were shifted to Combined Military Hospital in Sialkot, the main city near the border with India.
Pakistani border forces also responded to the Indian shelling.
The incidents came less than a week after high-level talks were aborted amid a row over Kashmir.
The meeting between the Indian and Pakistani national security advisers in New Delhi on Sunday was called off at the last minute amid a dispute about whether the agenda should include Kashmir, the Himalayan territory both sides control in part but claim in full.
In a statement issued to the media, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Pakistan summoned the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad to lodge protest against ceasefire violations.
“The Government of Pakistan strongly protested over the latest ceasefire violations by India in Harpal and Chaprar sectors at the Working Boundary resulting in shahadat (martyrdom) of 6 civilians, including a woman and a child,” the statement said  
A senior Pakistani security official said that Indian forces began firing around 3am yesterday and continued intermittently during the morning.
“Six civilians embraced shahadat and 46 were severely injured including 22 females due to Indian unprovoked firing/shelling on working boundary near Sialkot in Chaprar and Harpal sector,” a statement from the Pakistani military said, adding that they had returned fire.
Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region since both gained independence in 1947, and it remains a major source of tension.
About a dozen militant groups have been fighting since 1989 for either the independence of the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.
Shelling across the de facto border, known as the Line of Control (LoC) in disputed Kashmir and the “working boundary” in Punjab, has been on the rise this month.
Sunday’s talks had brought hopes of a possible easing of tensions, but these were dashed as the meeting was sunk amid a welter of angry rhetoric on Saturday.
The plan for Sunday’s talks came from a meeting between Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi at a regional summit in Russia last month.
Little of substance was expected but the very fact that the security advisers, Sartaj Aziz for Pakistan and Ajit Doval for India, were to meet at all was seen as progress.
But the plan faltered at familiar obstacles: Aziz’s intention to meet Kashmiri leaders in New Delhi — an issue that scuppered foreign secretary-level talks last year — and India’s insistence the agenda should focus on terrorism.
Islamabad, for its part, insists talks must be wide-ranging and include thorny issues like Kashmir.

India ‘only external threat’
India is the only external threat for Pakistan, the military has told a senate defence committee.
General Rashad Mahmood, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, briefed the committee members on Thursday, Dawn online reported yesterday.
The committee, led by Mushahid Hus­sain, was also infor­med that India had over the last couple of years purchased weapons worth $100bn – 80% of which were Pakistan-specific.
The Indian Army would be buying weapons worth another $100bn, the report added.
The situation was particularly volatile in view of the suspended dialogue between the two countries and absence of any conflict resolution mechanism, the army official said.
India and Pakistan have fought three major wars since 1947, besides a serious military confrontation over the Kargil hills in Jammu and Kashmir in 1999.
The two militaries frequently fire shells at each other’s positions on the Kashmir border.



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