JAMMU: A junior commissioned officer of the Army was killed when Pakistani troops violated ceasefire twice on Friday along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri’s Nowshera sector.
“The first breach of truce came around 3.30pm with Pakistan initiating unprovoked firing with small arms and heavy mortar shelling along the LoC, to which the Army effectively retaliated,” a Jammu-based defence spokesperson said.
Around 5.30pm, Pakistan again violated the ceasefire, attracting befitting retaliation from the Indian troops. “In the cross-border exchange of fire, Naib Subedar Ravinder was critically injured and later succumbed,” the spokesperson added.
The past year witnessed 5,100 ceasefire violations by Pakistan along the LoC — the highest-ever recorded since the signing of the bilateral agreement in 2003 — which works out to an average of 14 violations a day, in which 36 people, including 24 security personnel, were killed and 130 injured across J&K. The number of breaches was 1,811 more than 3,289 violations recorded in 2019, official sources said.