MUZAFFARABAD: A woman, who was injured in Indian shelling in a village of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) along the restive Line of Control on August 13, died on Monday.

District disaster management officer Shariq Talat told Dawn by telephone from Kotli that 40-year-old Shakila Bibi, wife of Mohammad Rafique, breathed her last at the residence of a relative in the city of Kotli in the small hours of Monday.

Ms Bibi and her 12-year-old daughter were injured in Goi Kathar village of Kotli on August 13, following which they were admitted in District Hospital, Kotli.

An official at the hospital told Dawn that Ms Bibi and her daughter were released from the facility on August 15.

However, it was not clear as to how and why the victim had been discharged from the hospital if she had not fully recovered. Kotli Deputy Commissioner Dr Umer Azam did not respond to several phone calls to answer this question.

On August 5, a teenage girl had also succumbed to her wounds in a health facility in Rawalpindi, a day after she was injured along with her mother and two siblings in Battal sector of Poonch district.

According to Syed Shahid Mohyiddin Qadri, AJK’s secretary for civil defence and disaster management, in the current year “unrelenting and unprovoked” ceasefire violations by India had left 18 innocent civilians, 10 females and 8 males — martyred and another 156 civilians — 91 males and 65 females — injured in different parts of AJK.

He said as many as 29 houses and 11 shops were destroyed and 283 houses were partially damaged in Indian shelling.

Apart from that, he said, five mosques, one health facility, four educational institutions, one petrol pump, nine vehicles, two motorcycles, one agriculture office building and three cattle sheds had also suffered damage due to shelling.

The villagers had also lost some 101 cattle head to shelling in the current year, Mr Qadri said.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2020