“Artillery Deployment: Tensions Rise as Pakistan Moves Forces to India’s Border Following Kashmir Incident”

Pakistan has positioned artillery near India’s border amid escalating tensions with its nuclear-armed neighbor India after a deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir.

Video footage circulating online shows multiple Pakistani artillery pieces heading towards the border in response to a second night of cross-border firing.

Pakistani soldiers fired at Indian posts along the highly militarised frontier in disputed Kashmir on Friday, the Indian military said yesterday. 

Tensions have begun to flare between the nuclear-armed rivals following Tuesday’s militant attack in Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.  

Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri blamed Islamabad for supporting “cross-border terrorism,” leading New Delhi to expel all Pakistani citizens within 72 hours.

Pakistan denies the charge. The assault, near the resort town of Pahalgam in India-controlled Kashmir, was claimed by a previously unknown militant group calling itself the Kashmir Resistance. 

India also suspended a decades-old water sharing treaty brokered by the World Bank in 1960 as part of its response.

Any attempt by India to cut off water to Pakistan will be considered an ‘act of war’, Islamabad has said, after the historical adversaries exchanged fire earlier this week.

The UN also urged both New Delhi and Islamabad to show ‘maximum restraint’ after Pakistani troops reportedly fired at an Indian position on the border.

The Cabinet Committee on Security, headed up by Modi, decided to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty ‘until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism’, Misri said.

The Indus river, which flows through India to Pakistan, is crucial for millions of farmers in both nations. 

The suspension of water sharing ahead of the sowing season in Pakistan may have a significant impact on its crop production, with experts warning it will lead to a spike in food prices.

A statement from Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said: ‘Any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan as per the Indus Waters Treaty, and the usurpation of the rights of lower riparian will be considered as an Act of War and responded with full force.’

Senator Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s former Federal Minister for Climate Change and Environment, told MailOnline: ‘With zero evidence, India has laid the entire blame on Pakistan, and used this tragedy as an excuse to dismantle all diplomatic and other ties like the Indus Waters Treaty that have stood the test of time and several wars.’

Khalid Hussain Baath, chairman of a national farmers’ union in Pakistan, said India’s move came at a time when there is both a water shortage and low predicted rainfall.

‘This is a true war,’ he added. 

Pakistan responded to the moves by suspending all visas issued to Indian nationals under an exemption scheme with immediate effect and closing its airspace to Indian flights.

UN officials urged both sides to engage peacefully after troops exchanged fire overnight along the Line of Control (LOC) that separates the two countries, though Pakistani officials played down the incident.

‘There is post-to-post firing in Leepa Valley overnight. There is no firing on the civilian population. Life is normal. Schools are open,’ said Syed Ashfaq Gilani, a senior government official in Jhelum Vally district.

Three Indian army officials said that Pakistani soldiers used small arms to fire at an Indian position in Kashmir late on Thursday. The officials said troops retaliated and no casualties were reported.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: ‘We very much appeal to both the governments to exercise maximum restraint, and to ensure that the situation and the developments we’ve seen do not deteriorate any further.

‘Any issues between Pakistan and India, we believe, can be and should be resolved peacefully through meaningful mutual engagement.’

But earlier today the Indian High Commissioner to the UK, Vikram K Doraiswami, refused to rule out a military response to the Kashmir attack.

He told Times Radio: ‘Let’s see. All options are on the table.

‘We will bring these people to justice. I think there should be no doubt on that account.

‘We will reserve the right to deal with the people who attack civilians.’ 

Pakistan warned it could suspend the Simla Agreement, a critical peace treaty brokered after the 1971 war between the two nations.

Under the agreement,and Pakistan went on to establish the LOC, previously called the Ceasefire Line, a highly militarised de facto border that divides disputed Kashmir between the countries.

India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.

The two sides have long accused each other of backing forces to destabilise one another, and New Delhi describes all militancy in Kashmir as Pakistan-backed terrorism.

India’s army chief is to visit Pahalgam, the tourist hotspot where Tuesday’s deadly attack took place, to lead a high-level security review.

Authorities have already demolished the houses of two suspected militants, according to Indian media.

One of the properties belonged to Asif Sheikh, a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, who were allegedly involved in the deadly shootings in Pahalgam on Tuesday.

Earlier today UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer told Modi he was ‘horrified’ by the incident.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: ‘He expressed his deep condolences on behalf of the British people to all those affected, their loved ones and the people of India.’

Yesterday Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for an all-party meeting with opposition parties to brief them on the government’s response to the attack, with fears that New Delhi’s retaliation could go even further.

In 2019, when insurgents rammed a car packed with explosives into a paramilitary convoy, killing 40 soldiers, India claimed to strike a militant training camp inside Pakistan.

Pakistan responded with air raids, downing an Indian military aircraft and captured an Indian pilot who was later released.

Two years later, in 2021, the two countries renewed a previous ceasefire agreement along their border, which has largely held despite attacks on Indian forces by insurgents in Kashmir.