Firing de-escalates along IB in Jammu, Samba

Jammu: After nine days of heavy firing and mortar shelling from across the border, firing de-escalated along the 192-km long International Border in Jammu frontier overnight with Pakistan opening fire on four border out posts in Kathua district.

There was no firing along the IB in Jammu and Samba districts.

"There was no cross-border firing during the intervening night of October 9 and 10 along the International Border in Jammu and Samba districts", BSF spokesman told PTI today.

However, there was firing by Pakistan along IB in Hiranagar sector of Kathua district for 20 minutes from 2000 hours to 2020 hours involving four BSF BoPs, the spokesman said.

"There was no loss of life or damage", he said.

The IB has witnessed heavy firing for nine days that has left eight persons dead and injured nearly 90 people, including 13 securitymen.

Besides over 32,000 people have fled from their border homes leaving 113 hamlets deserted along the IB.

India and Pakistan troops traded heavy fire along the IB on the intervening night of October 7 and 8 after Pakistan Rangers shelled almost the entire IB by targeting 60 Border Out Posts (BoPs) and over 130 border hamlets in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts of Jammu and Kashmir, in which 15 people including 3 BSF jawans were injured.

There have been over thee dozen ceasefire violations along IB since October one.