Armitage in town when Pak accuses, India denies

Coinciding with US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s visit, Pakistan today accused India of using fighter jets to bomb one o...

Coinciding with US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s visit, Pakistan today accused India of using fighter jets to bomb one of its posts ahead of Gultari, opposite Mushkoh Valley in Drass. The allegation came amid heavy exchange of artillery fire in several sectors along the Line of Control (LoC).

Claiming that the Indian Army had launched a major offensive on one of its posts in Gultari, Pakistani Army spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi said that Pakistan had repelled the attack and pinned down Indian forces.

This, he alleged, led to precision bombing by Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter jets to rescue the soldiers. He further claimed that a large number of Indian soldiers had been killed and injured in this ‘‘failed offensive’’.

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However, an Army spokesman in New Delhi, Brigadier Shruti Kant denied the Pakistani allegations, terming them as malicious and a figment of Qureshi’s imagination to malign India’s image internationally. ‘‘There was no Indian offensive and no casualties as claimed by Pakistan,’’ he said.

It was in this Drass-Mushkoh Valley that Indian and Pakistani forces fought a bloody battle during the Kargil conflict. The situation here has been tense throughout. Pakistan has a brigade headquarters in Gultari, nine kilometres from the LoC.