SRINAGAR: At least five Indian soldiers were killed in an attack along the dividing Line of Control in the Poonch sector of Kashmir, reports said on Tuesday morning.
The overnight attack comes just days after Pakistan proposed resuming stalled peace talks with India.
Earlier, Indian firing killed one Pakistani soldier and wounded another on Saturday.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah confirmed the deaths in a tweet saying: “Was briefed early this morning about news that 5 of our soldiers had been killed on the LOC. My heartfelt condolences to their next of kin.”
“These incidents don’t help efforts to normalise or even improve relations with Pak & call in to question the Pak Govt’s recent overtures,” he said.
Reports quoting defence sources said Pakistani troopers trespassed into the Indian side of Kashmir and launched the attack during the night.
Sources say the Indians attacked were on patrol duty along the Line of Control in what the army describes as “an area domination exercise” in the Chakandabad area of Poonch.
The assault is likely to impact plans for a resumption of peace talks between India and Pakistan, after a long spell of troubled ties over a similar incident in January when Pak soldiers killed two Indian jawans, one of whom was beheaded.
Pakistani security officials denied any involvement on Tuesday in the deaths of Indian soldiers on the heavily militarised defacto border in Southern Kashmir.
There was no indiscriminate firing from our side, Reuters quoted one security official as saying.
Pakistani officials said Indian firing killed one Pakistani soldier and wounded another on Saturday. According to the Inter Services Public Relations, the incident took place at 10:30am and there was no evident reason for the firing.
While the Pakistani Army accused Indian troops of staging an unprovoked attack across the disputed border in Kashmir, the Indian army said it had fired in a calibrated manner in response to Pakistani firing.
Border violation near Sialkot
The Pakistan Army also accused Indian forces of another border violation late Saturday.
Meanwhile the death of Indian soldiers sparked uproar in Parliament, with the opposition parties accusing the government of a soft foreign policy. Defence Minister A K Antony is expected to make a statement in both houses.
India and Pakistan were set to resume dialogue with water talks later this month and the two Prime Ministers were to meet in end-September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh said recently that India would be “picking up the threads” of peace talks with the new Pakistani government led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which was elected in May.
Cross-border relations hit a low in January and February this year after six soldiers in total from both sides were killed in exchanges along the Line of control in Kashmir.
Pakistan denied that its troops had mutilated two Indian soldiers and beheaded one of them.
Prime Minister Sharif has called for closer rapprochement with India since winning the general elections.
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