“Sacrifice”: Kaschmiris mourns children who were killed in India-Pakistan Frontier India-Pakistan voltages News

Srinagar, Indian Kashmir-with Indian cashmere Javaid IQBal opens a photo on his cell phone. It shows a little girl wearing a pink wool hat, a gray piece of jewelry loosely around her neck – her face shines in a wide smile.

The five -year -old Maryam, his daughter, who only posed happily for the photo last month. Today it is no longer.

Maryam was killed on the morning of May 7th when an explosive ended in her house in Sukha Katha, a cluster of about 200 houses in the Poonch district in Indian Kashmir, about 20 km (12 miles) from the control line (LOC), India's DE-FACTO border with Pakistan in the controversial Himalayan region.

“Oh, Maryam,” shouts IQBAL, 36, and clings to the chest. “This is a loss that I can't live with.”

Maryam belonged to at least 21 civilians-15 of them in Poonch-in cross-border fire in Kashmir, which were administered in India, at the beginning of May as South Asian nuclear powers and historical enemies who have been working in their most intense military confrontation for decades. They exchanged missiles and drones for four days and stood on the abyss of their fifth war before they terminated an armistice on May 10th.

This ceasefire has been recorded since then, although the tensions remain high and both nations started diplomatic outreach initiatives to convince the rest of the world in a conflict that goes back until 1947 when the British left the subcontinent and split it to India and Pakistan.

But for families of those who have lost relatives in cross -border shot, the difficult peace along the LOC at the moment means little.

“My heart is bleeding when I think about how you have [Maryam] died in my arms, ”whines IQBAL.

“The earth rattled among us”

For decades, the LOC residents have been in the fire line between India and Pakistan, which three of their four earlier wars have taken to Kashmir. Both control parts of the region with two tiny splinters, which are also administered by China. However, India, however, claims very cashmere, while Pakistan also claims the entire region, with the exception of the parts that China, its allies, ruled.

In 2003, India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire along the LOC, which was largely renewed on both sides despite frequent border complaints and murders of civilian population in 2021.

But on April 22nd, armed men killed 25 tourists and a Kashmir pony driver in Pahalgam, a picturesque resort in Kashmir, which started the latest chapter in the India Pakistan conflict over the region.

Neu -Delhi accused Pakistan of supporting the armed men, an indictment that Islamabad denied. Since the beginning of an armed rebellion against India's rule in the Indian Kashmir in 1989, New Delhi has accused Islamabad of training and supported the rebels financially. Islamabad says that it only supports the separatist movement diplomatically and morally.

On May 7, the Indian military reacted to the murders of Pahangam by starting rockets in several cities in Pakistan and Pakistan Kashmir. India claimed that it hit “terrorist” and killed about 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan said that more than 50 people were killed – but most were civilians, with a military personnel being killed.

Pakistan reacted with severe cross -border fire. IQBAL says that on May 7th at 2 a.m. he was woke up by the noises of artillery mussels, which “landed one after the other and her rackets rattle the earth under us”.

“I made all the hectic calls to everyone, such as the police, the administrative officials in the administration, and on to -free emergency numbers such as 108, which they advocated to save me and my family,” he said to Al Jazera. “But nobody came.”

He says that he has broken his family – his wife, three children and three children of his brother, who were with them at the time – in an outbuilding, hoping that ash blocks on the structure would become more resistant to all Pakistani mussels.

The explosions came closer and closer.

Shortly after sunrise, he says, a shell over the mountains, a lane lane that flocked behind it, and ended up with an explosion near her shelter. His splinters raced in all directions and beamed through the walls behind which IQBAL and his family had sought refuge.

When he blinked through the smoky haze, his eyes rested on Maryam, whose little body was perforated with hot metal shards when they were listless in the middle of the debris that were soaked with their blood.

“I called a friend for help. He alerted the administration, who sent an ambulance, who tried to approach our house, but the uninterrupted fire forced him to return,” he said, adding that the ambulance tried to get closer five times, but not.

When the shot waned and she was able to get to a hospital, Maryam was dead. Her sister, 7-year-old Irish Naaz, was also hit by a splitter in her forehead and is currently recovering in the family village of the family in Qasba near the loc.

A ghost city

The shelling continued in Sukha Katha for three days. Today it looks like a ghost town that broke threatening silence only through the strong wind storms that sweep through the open doors and windows of empty houses, with curtains fluttering and dusting around them.

Most of the residents who fled out of the fire did not return.

“There are around 200 houses here and they are empty because everyone fled to safety,” said Muhammad Mukhar, a 35-year-old inhabitant. He and some others remained. “We only keep in thieves. These city dwellers are unlikely that it will soon return because things are still uncertain.”

The villagers have reasons to get afraid of more attacks, says Zafar Choudhary, the political analyst of Kashmiri. He says that the loss of the civilian on the Indian side of the border in Poonch is due to the “special” topography of the region, which gives Pakistan a “unique advantage”.

“Most cities and villages on the Indian side are in the valleys below, while the Pakistani army posts stay high on the mountain peaks and overlook the civilian dwellings here,” he says. “Even if India returns, the civil loss of the Pakistani side would remain minimal. This makes border cities like Poonch susceptible.”

In Khanetar, a city with dilapidated structures of bricks and reinforcement pieces, which are broken with life-size displays of soda drinks, an asphalt road zigzag is through the forests and gorges and combines the border areas of Poonch with the levels of Jammu in the southern part of the cashmere in India.

In this village, a Pakistani shell explosion killed the 13-year-old Vihan Kumar in the family's car when they tried to escape shooting. The boy died in place, his skull spoke up.

“It was a loud noise, and my son was immediately in a laughter,” recalls Sanjeev Bhargav, VIhan's father. “We immediately hurried to the district hospital in Poonch, where Vihan breathed his last.” Vihan was the only child of his parents.

“Naked dance of death”

In the intensive care unit of the Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu, the second largest city in the Indian Kashmir, about 230 km southeast of Poonch, Arusha Khan, who consoles her husband, Rameez Khan, a 46-year-old teacher who had fulfilled his life after his left beach.

They mourn the loss of their twins – son Zain Ali and daughter Urba Fatima – who died on May 7 at the shelling of their house. They were 12 in April.

The family chewed in their house in Poonch, when the frightened twins their uncle, Arusha's brother Aadil Pathan, who lived in Surankote, lived in the same district, about 40 km (40 km), and asked him to save them.

“The children were afraid of their minds,” says Arusha's sister Maria Pathan Al Jazeera on the phone. “Aadil left home in his car at 5:30 a.m. and reached her place an hour later.”

Maria says Aadil had called outside the house and opened the door of his car. But as soon as the captured family came out and ran towards the car, a shell hit. Urba died in place. Rameez also suffered an “enormous loss of blood,” said Maria due to his injuries.

“And suddenly Arusha Zain couldn't see around,” says Maria. “He was injured and had staggered in the house of a neighbor about 100 meters away. When Arusha saw him, he was only one body on the floor.” He also died.

“We do not want our sister and family enemies to have happened,” says Maria in the middle of Schluchzen.

Meenakshi Ganguly, deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia, says that attacks on children in such conflicts between two nations could represent war crimes.

“Unlossed civilian areas is a violation of international humanitarian law,” she says and speaks to Al Jazera. “If such attacks are deliberately committed, they would mean war crimes.”

The politician Shamim Ganai, based in Poonch, says the destruction that the Pakistani shelling built was a “naked dance of death”.

“We were not prepared for what we finally experienced. There were no preparations to evacuate people. People just ran, many even barefoot that were held on chickens and other things in their arms,” ​​he recalls.

“I lived through earlier border matches,” he says. “But that was nothing I have ever seen.”