‘Guns shut up if Govts talk’

Five-year-old Imtiyaz is only in school. He had no idea about the Jammu attack, had no knowledge about the cross-country war talk. In fact, ...

Five-year-old Imtiyaz is only in school. He had no idea about the Jammu attack, had no knowledge about the cross-country war talk. In fact, his house in Jabla village, right on the Line of Control, doesn’t even have a television set.

Today, he learnt his first lesson in Indo-Pak hostility when a Pakistani shell caught him unawares in the corridor and a shrapnel hit his head. His condition is serious.

Victims of Pakistani shelling. Javeed Shah

He was fortunate to have made it to the Uri hospital. Shelling killed one, injured eight others.Several injured villagers are still trapped in the village, the Pak pounding hasn’t let up, and the ambulances find it hard to get there. In fact, the cross-border shelling has resumed here after a lull of more than one-and-half years.

As Station House Officer, Uri A.R. Khan receives frantic calls for help. ‘‘Shells have hit Ghulam Rasool house in Salamabad village and razed it to ground. There were just two men out at the time. We have no idea how many were inside,’’ a policeman informs Khan on his wireless set.

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According to eyewitnesses, Pakistani shelling started at around 9 am this morning. Tension has gripped Uri town. Schools were closed at 11.30 am and shopkeepers downed their shutters as explosions, now landing very close to this border township, got louder. People from adjoining villages, who had made it to Uri early in the morning, could not return. There wasn’t a person visible on the road across the army check point.

Says Sajjad Hussain of Basgaran village: ‘‘Shells were being fired without a break from 9 am. It gave us no time to hide in bunkers. The blasts are deafening. This is just like what happened in 1998 when more than 100 villagers died.’’

Like Hussain, the other villagers were visibly angry. The shelling had come not only as a violent reminder of the 1965 Indo-Pak war and later the 1998 intense cross-border shelling, it had also widened the physical distances between the already divided families of this border area. Almost every Uri resident has a family member living across the LoC.

For instance, Abdul Jabbar Mir’s family lives just a mile away from his village but right across the LoC. He hasn’t seen them since 1978. ‘‘We don’t want a war because we know what it will cost. We know how even heightened tensions ruin lives on the border. Our only concern is to stop this shelling. Most of the time the talks have no outcome, but at least the borders get silent.’’

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As he spoke of his yearning, a few Pak shells hit a mountain close by. They left a huge cloud of smoke behind. A few miles away, some Pakistani shells landed in Mohra village. Three injured this time.