Pak troops violate LoC truce

A junior commissioned officer was injured as Pakistani troops pounded Indian posts with 15 rockets and opened indiscriminate machine gun fire along the Line of Control in Poonch district in the "biggest" ceasefire violation in Jammu and Kashmir.
    
There were 17 infiltration bids and nine truce violations along the border this year. The last ceasefire violation occurred on January 26 when Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked firing in Kanachak sub-sector of Jammu.
    
Pakistani troops fired 15 under-barrel grenade launcher rockets on five Indian forward defence locations from its eight border posts along the LoC in Krishna Gati sub-sector of Poonch district at around 1815 hours last night, Brigadier General Staff, 16 Corps, Brig Gurdeep Singh told PTI today.
    
It was followed by the heavy firing by machine guns on the forward posts, he said adding "the heavy and indiscriminate firing continued for two hours".
    
The rockets missed the intended target and exploded near the posts, he said adding that one JCO Subedar PC Thakur of 17 Mahar Regiment was wounded and taken to a hospital.
    
Indian troops fired from small arms weapons and intermittent exchanges ended early today, he said.
    
"It was for the first time such a large number of rockets were fired and also several Pakistani posts were involved in the firing with heavy weapons," Brig Gurdeep said.
    
"This is biggest ceasefire violation so far. We will lodge a strong protest with our Pakistani counterparts at a flag meeting today," he said.
    
The aim of the firing by Pakistani troops was to give cover to infiltrating militants, officials said adding, however, their objective was not successful as all the border posts were alerted.
    
"Pakistani forward posts were instrumental in facilitating infiltration into Indian territory," BSF DIG S Sagwan had said earlier.
    
Information from various security agencies involved in security grid in Jammu and Kashmir has put figure of infiltration attempts at 433 in 2009, which is 91 attempts more than 2008.
    
As per the police figures, 342 infiltration attempts were made from across the border in 2008, while 2007 and 2006 reported 535 and 573 such attempts along LoC and IB in Jammu and Kashmir, where over 100 militants managed to sneak in.
    
The BSF had said infiltration attempts along the border is up and measures have been taken by security forces to foil these bids as it is an area of concern at a time when violence has gone down in Jammu and Kashmir.
     
Addressing the chief ministers' conference on Internal Security in New Delhi earlier this month, prime minister Manmohan Singh had said though there has been a marked decline in the number of terrorist incidents from 2008 to 2009 in Jammu and Kashmir, infiltration levels have shown an increase in the same period and "recently there have been some incidents which are disturbing."