Mohit Kandhari

The first day of holy month of Ramzan started on a violent note for border residents in Samba and Hiranagar sectors across Jammu frontier on Thursday.

At least half a dozen border outposts of Border Security Force (BSF) were targeted along with several civilian areas by Pak rangers in the area.

Official sources maintained Pak rangers may have targeted the BSF posts as massive search operations were launched by the BSF in the same sector to uncover the cross border tunnel possibly used by the infiltrators late Sunday night to sneak inside the Indian territory.

The entire border belt has been kept in a state of high alert to prevent any terror strike ahead of the day long visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 19.

Meanwhile, two persons including one BSF jawan and a civilian had received injuries in heavy exchange of cross border firing.

Several civilian pockets in the area were also hit hard as heavy firing continued till early Thursday morning. Several live stock perished and civilian houses bore brunt of the heavy exchange of firing.The local residents spent the whole night fearing for their lives amid heavy mortar shelling.

According to border residents in the area Pakistan rangers used 82 mm mortars and LMG fire to target the civilian areas. The area is witnessing hectic activity since Sunday when for the first time an alert sentry had detected suspicious movement of a heavily armed group of infiltrators.

It was followed by another infiltration bid in Samba sector but the same was foiled by the BSF jawans. One BSF constable had also attained martyrdom in the cross border firing. DG BSF KK Sharma also landed in Jammu on Tuesday to take stock of the prevailing border situation. Local MLA representing Hiranagar Assembly constituency Kuldeep Raj visited forward areas along with senior district officers to take stock of the situation. The district authorities also closed down educational institutions falling in the 5 km radius of the International border.

Interacting with the media Kuldeep Raj maintained the local residents are unhappy over delay caused in construction of individual bunkers allocated by the centre recently. He said a total number of 1700 individual bunkers were sanctioned but work is yet to begun on the same. He said in the absence of these bunkers the local residents were a worried lot as they face the spectre of relocating to other places in the event of further escalation of border tensions between India and Pakistan.

Courtesy: Pioneer: Friday, 18 May 2018 | Mohit Kandhari | Jammu