UN observers visit Sialkot Working Boundary to see glimpses of Indian firing

UN Team

Corporate Ambassador/ISLAMABAD: Once again a 3-member team of the United Nations (UN) observers visited the Working Boundary at Kundanpur village in Sialkot on Saturday to look into the damage caused by the Indian firing at the border.

Eight Pakistanis were killed and several others wounded on Friday in unprovoked shelling of Indian forces on Pakistani border villages near Working Boundary in Sialkot’s Charwah, Harpal, Chaprar and Sucheetgarh sectors.

Punjab Rangers spokesman Major Waheed Bukhari, the United Nations Military Observers group in Pakistan observed damages and losses caused by the Indian firing. Yesterday, the UN observers had visited the Thathi Khurd village in Sucheetgarh and had met locals affected by Indian shelling. During that visit, they had sought details from them about fresh hostilities on part of the Border Security Force (BSF) personnel.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had expressed concerns over firing along the Working Boundary. He had also expressed condolence over the loss of eight civilian lives and injuries to 47 others during the firing. Following yesterday’s firing, the Foreign Office had summoned Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan T.C.A. Raghavan and had lodged a strong protest with him “over continued LOC/working boundary violations”. Raghavan was told that India had to honour the ceasefire agreement of 2003 between the two countries.

Last week, the first high-level peace talks in years between the two country’s national security advisers were cancelled after a dispute over the agenda for those talks. In December 2013, the two countries had pledged to uphold the 2003 ceasefire accord which had been left in tatters by repeated violations that year. The truce breaches had put the nascent bilateral peace dialogue on hold.

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