By Agencies
MUZAFFARABAD: The prime minister of Pakistan-held Kashmir said on Sunday his helicopter came under Indian fire while flying close to the highly militarised Line of Control (LoC) but he escaped unhurt.
The incident happened in Havaily district in Poonch sector while Raja Farooq Haider was on his way to a nearby village to give condolences to the family of a local politician who had died.
"My helicopter had not even committed any violation and was flying well within our side of the LoC when Indian troops opened fire," Haider said in a statement from Islamabad.
Raja Arshad, a senior local administration official in Havaily, confirmed the incident and said Haider was unhurt and there was no damage to the helicopter.
Coming a day after Indian and Pakistani Foreign Ministers exchanged barbs at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the Pakistani chopper today violated Indian airspace along the LoC and retreated after being engaged by small arms fire by the Army, as seen in a video tweeted out by ANI.
Defence sources told TNIE that after detecting the enemy chopper, Indian Army men at forward locations fired from small arms towards the chopper. Sources said the locals also saw the white coloured Pakistani chopper flying over the area before making the retreat.
The LoC serves as a de facto border dividing the contested Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.
As per norms recognised by India and Pakistan, the helicopters of the two sides are not supposed to come within one kilometre of the LoC while the fixed-wing aircraft cannot fly within 10 km of the LoC.
The incident comes after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj's statement in the UN General Assembly yesterday, where she said Pakistan's commitment to terrorism as an instrument of official policy has not abated one bit.
There has been a surge of shelling along the LoC in recent months as tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan rose.
The two countries have been in dispute over Kashmir since independence from Britain in 1947, and fought two of their three wars over the territory.
New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of supporting militant groups waging an insurgency in Kashmir. Pakistan denies the accusation, calling the uprising in Kashmir an indigenous freedom struggle.
This month, India blamed postage stamps released by Pakistan depicting Kashmiri freedom struggle as part of its reason for cancelling rare talks between the neighbours in New York.
(With inputs from Express News Sevice, AFP and PTI)
