ISLAMABAD, Dec 8: Pakistan on Sunday denied one of its drones had flown over Indian territory in disputed Kashmir supported by heavy mortar and machinegun fire from the Pakistan army.
Indian police reported the incident on Saturday in the border district of Poonch. Indian troops opened fire and the drone returned to Pakistani Kashmir, a senior police official in Jammu claimed.
“That is a lot of nonsense,” said Major-General Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, when asked about the Indian claims. He did not elaborate.
Separately, a spokesman for the Hizbul Mujahideen group, fighting for Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, told Reuters in Muzaffarabad that two of its members, including a senior commander, had been killed on Saturday.
The spokesman said the senior official who died in a clash with Indian forces in Indian-occupied Kashmir was Mohammad Sharif, alias Humza Faridee.
“The killing of Sharif is to some extent a setback for the group, but it will not affect the ongoing movement for the freedom of Kashmir,” he told Reuters in Muzaffarabad.
He said five Indian soldiers were also killed in the clash.
An Indian defence ministry spokesman told Reuters at the weekend that two Hizbul Mujahideen fighters and one soldier were killed in a gunbattle, and another soldier injured. It was not clear if he was referring to the same incident.
