MUZAFFARABAD, June 6: Six persons, including five children, were killed and 14 others were injured, some of them seriously, in different areas of Azad Kashmir in unprovoked Indian shelling with heavy weapons on Thursday, officials said.

The shelling began in Abbaspur sector in the southern Poonch district at 9am, in which the enemy troops used medium artillery and mortar guns, officials said.

One of the shells landed in a house in Taroti village, killing two cousins — one and a half years old Natasha, daughter of Azad and 3-year-old Mehreen, daughter of Sudheer. Azad’s another daughter, Shamza, 2, was critically injured and removed to a nearby hospital. Some houses were also damaged in the area.

Another man, Mir Mohammad, was injured in Sehra village in Hajira sector of Poonch district, officials said.

In the neighbouring district of Bagh, they said, two people, identified as Mohammad Bashir and Sajjad Khan, were injured in Forward Kahuta sector.

In Kotli district, 60-year-old Nasreen Akhtar, wife of Younas Khan, was killed in Seri village of Khuiratta, as the firing resumed in the area at 11.30am. Four other people, including two boys, a man and a woman, were injured in Jagal Pal, Chattar and Janjot Bahadar villages in the same sector early Thursday morning. Their names, however, could not be ascertained due to poor communication links with the area.

The Indian troops also targeted Nakyal sector villages in district Kotli at 10am, in which three people identified as Shafiq Mughal, 18, son of Nek Mohammad; Ishtiaq, 10, son of Mohammad Shafique; and Haq Nawaz, 10, son of Akhtar, were killed after being hit by splinters of mortar shells. Three others, Perveen, 35, and her 12-year-old daughter, Sobia, and Ashfaq, 23, were injured in this sector.