Hostilities Escalate | Populated Kashmiri Regions Caught in Dangerous India-Pakistan Exchange of Fire
From the Dangerous Himalayan Frontier - As the camera panned around a home that spiraled into the ground due to the brutality of mortar fire in Poonch, a tumultuous hill city straddling the disputed border between India and Pakistan, the voice of an unidentified woman echoed out.
This tragedy unfolds before us.
A video provided to Al Jazeera by locals in Poonch unveiled a collapsed staircase, gaping craters in the walls, and a courtyard woefully overwhelmed by debris and soiled clothing, all painted in blood.
Everything I built has crumbled.
Eleven souls belonging to the Poonch community have lost their lives due to Pakistani aggression since early May, in retaliation for Indian missile strikes that hit multiple targets across Pakistan's Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. These strikes, themselves a response to a devastating attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir's Pahalgam on April 22, represent the most significant strike against Pakistani territory since the 1971 war, which led to the dissolution of Pakistan's eastern wing and the creation of Bangladesh.
As both nuclear-armed nations dance on the precipice of potential military conflict, many Kashmiris affirm that they have become collateral damage in their game of power and dominance. Pakistan's pummeling of Indian-administered Kashmir on Wednesday night served as the most intense barrage of shelling that villages and towns in the region have faced in more than four decades, according to locals and experts.
This night brought terror to our homes.
Rameez Choudhary, a Poonch native, shared his account with Al Jazeera.
The casualties included a pair of siblings who were crushed to death when a shell obliterated their house; two local store-owners who were vaporized by relentless ammunition; a seven-year-old child; a teenage boy; a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom; and four other men. The most heavily impacted villages in Poonch district were Shahpur, Mankote, and Krishna Ghati, while the intensity of shelling escalated in Rajouri district's Laam, Manjakote, and Gambhir Brahmana areas as residents fled for safety.
The War We Didn't Choose
The border clashes have followed the heinous attack in Pahalgam's tourist resort, claiming the lives of 26 people, most of them Indian visitors holidaying in the volatile region, two weeks ago.
At the fading hours on Wednesday, Indian military aircraft surged through the skyline and unleashed missiles and other munitions into neighboring Pakistan. Indian authorities confirmed that they targeted at least nine locations inside Pakistan.
India claims that Pakistan is supporting the armed group responsible for the attack on Indian tourists, a charge Pakistan has denied. However, India insists that their missiles hit "terror base camps," whereas Pakistan asserts that the strikes killed 31 civilians, all innocent bystanders.
The sprawling extent and separation of the numerous military targets hit in the recent skirmishes – with India firing missiles into four cities hundreds of kilometers apart in Pakistan's Punjab province— make this confrontation graver, in some respects, than the 1999 war between the two neighbors, according to some experts.
In contrast to the 1999 conflict, when Pakistani soldiers disguised themselves as rebels and took positions in the snow-crowned, jagged peaks of Kargil, a territory under Indian control, the current conflict sees a broad geographical reach, with the battles extending beyond this region.
We have been unwillingly dragged into a war we never desired.
Tara Kartha, Director of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, a Delhi-based think tank, and a former National Security Council Secretariat official, shared her perspective.
In 2019, the nations came close to war in the aftermath of the devastating attack in Pulwama town in South Kashmir, where a suicide bomber detonated an Indian paramilitary convoy, resulting in the death of 40 Indian servicemen. The Indian military responded by launching missiles that struck Balakot in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. However, in contrast to the current crisis, the involved parties had carefully managed their responses in 2019, keeping the conflict constrained within certain limits.
But this time, the carnage is different.
Caught in the center of their confrontation are the Kashmiris, experiencing the brunt of their tensions. By Wednesday, three various regions in Indian-administered Kashmir had been assaulted by Pakistani shelling.
Initially, we thought it was thunder. The skies roared at 1am.
Altaf Amin, a 22-year-old resident of Chandak village in Poonch, recounted this account to Al Jazeera.
Poonch is situated only 10 kilometers (six miles) from the contentious border separating Indian- and Pakistan-controlled territories in Kashmir, the Line of Control (LoC). The shelling in the area has lapsed since both countries renewed a ceasefire agreement in 2021, making the continuous bombardment, starting from the previous day, a surprise for many residents.
Social media was flooded with heart-wrenching videos, showcasing the magnitude of the human toll resulting from border shelling. A video authenticated by Al Jazeera captures the morbid scene of a teenager's lifeless body being carried into a van in Poonch, an arm brutally amputated. Different segments of the same clip display a corpse of a child, head devastated by a shell.
War should never be celebrated. When the shells land, they don't ask for identities. The ones calling for war have no idea what it feels like when a shell hits your children when they sleep at night.
As the boundaries between India and Pakistan seem to blur, dashed by the roar of relentless gunfire, an undeniable truth emerges: the price of their conflict is paid by the innocent, and the fear of their violence is shared by those who never sought it.
We don't want war.
This tragic incident is breaking news around the globe, another episode in the ongoing war-and-conflicts between India and Pakistan.
The escalating violence has left many lives shattered, with car-accidents, politics, and crime-and-justice taking a backseat in the general-news cycle.
Tensions between India and Pakistan have resulted in a series of brutal conflicts, with both nations seemingly oblivious to the innocent lives lost in the midst of their power struggles.
In the end, it is the common people, like the citizens of Poonch, who become the collateral damage in these games of war and conflicts.
