India-Pakistan clashes bring fear to Kashmir villages

By Sheikh Mushtaq

NAMBLA, India (Reuters) - When Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged fire for 16 hours on the disputed Kashmir border earlier this week, the worst violation of a 2003 ceasefire, the news sent a chill down Usman Khan's spine.

"It is so scary ... It makes me remember the shells landing here and there, the ground shaking and ear-splitting artillery explosions," Khan, 65, said in the small village of Nambla, around 50 meters from the military line of control separating India and Pakistan Kashmir.

After years of relative peace, villagers in this Uri sector of Indian Kashmir are in fear again. They live around 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the site of the latest clash.

"I pray it does not happen again," Khan said.

Nestled among pine forests west of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, this sector has been a battlefield in all three wars fought by the nuclear-armed neighbors since independence.

Nearby shrapnel holes in an abandoned old tin-roofed house are grim reminders of the ferocity of the barrages.

Hundreds of people were killed on both sides of the Kashmir frontier before the 2003 truce as India and Pakistan's armies engaged in daily lethal artillery duels and small arms clashes.

"I know pain and I know what peace is," said Mohammad Shamas, another villager, whose daughter was killed when an artillery shell fired by Pakistani troops slammed into his house in 2001.

Thousands of weary people living in villages near the military control line fear they will again be caught in the crossfire after the recent border clashes.

One Indian soldier was killed in the latest exchange of fire. It was the third incident in the last month, and some analysts believe there are deliberate attempts to destabilize the ceasefire line.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority region, since a revolt against Indian rule broke out in 1989.

"If it flares up we will be sitting ducks, like we were before the ceasefire," said the village head, Tariq Manhas.

"I pray sanity prevails on both armies and they don't turn again our villages into a firing ranges."

At a distance in a concrete bunker an Indian soldier stands guard, his finger on the trigger of a machinegun.

But, says another soldier, Ramesh Singh, a gun hanging over his shoulder: "I don't see or feel any tension here, we are all relaxed."