New Delhi:
The Army has retaliated to speculative firing on some Indian posts by Pakistani troops along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday night, military sources told NDTV. The security forces “effectively responded” to the Pakistan Army, they said, adding that there were no casualties.
“There were incidents of small arms firing at some places along the LoC initiated by Pakistan last night. The firing was effectively responded to,” sources said.
The exchange of fire took place days after a terror attack on tourists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam sparked a new crisis between the two neighbours.
India has hit Pakistan with a series of strict measures, including expulsion of Pakistani military attaches, suspension of the over six-decade-old Indus Water Treaty and immediate shutting down of the Attari land-transit post, in view of the “cross-border links” to Tuesday’s Pahalgam terror attack, that left 26 people, including a Nepali national, dead.
India on Thursday also formally notified Pakistan that the decision to indefinitely suspend the Indus Waters Treaty, signed in 1960, comes into effect immediately.
A letter from the Union Ministry of Water Resources to Syed Ali Murtuza, Secretary in the Ministry of Water Resources of Pakistan, said, “The obligation to honour a treaty in good faith is fundamental to a treaty. However, what we have seen instead is sustained cross-border terrorism by Pakistan targeting the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir”.
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It also mentioned that Pakistan has consistently ignored India’s efforts to work out certain issues that have cropped up with “fundamental changes in the circumstances that have taken place since the Treaty was executed”.
“These changes include significantly altered population demographics, the need to accelerate the development of clean energy and other changes in the assumptions underlying the sharing of waters under the Treaty,” the letter, which came shortly after Pakistan threatened to suspend all agreements between the two countries, including the Simla pact of 1972, which validates the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, read.
India said in addition, consistent cross-border terrorism has given rise to “uncertainties’ that have “directly impeded India’s full utilization of its rights under the Treaty”.
“Furthermore, apart from other breaches committed by it, Pakistan has refused to respond to India’s request to enter into negotiations as envisaged under the Treaty and is thus in breach of the Treaty,” the letter read.
The decision to put the Indus water agreement on hold was announced on Wednesday after a meeting of the Cabinet Committee of Security chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has vowed that India will “identify, track and punish” every terrorist and their “backers” who were behind the Pahalgam attack.