Pakistan and India have pledged to end repeated ceasefire violations on their disputed Kashmir border after months of high tension, the armies of the two countries said in a joint statement on Thursday.
Read also: Kashmir: a 70-year-old conflict between India and Pakistan
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The two parties have agreed to strict respect for all agreements, arrangements and ceasefires along the Line of Control and in all other sectors with immediate effect
" from midnight Wednesday, the statement said.
Bombing and gunfire are frequent along the Line of Control (LoC) which separates Azad Kashmir (Pakistan) from Jammu and Kashmir (India) for 740 km and has served as a de facto border for decades. decades between the two nuclear powers.
They invariably blame each other for these regular violations of the 2003 ceasefire.
India accuses Pakistan of having committed 5,000 violations of the ceasefire and killed around 20 civilians in 2020. For its part, Islamabad has counted more than 3,000 violations of the agreement, for 29 dead and 250 injured among civilians.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from the British Crown and the partition of 1947. It has been the cause of two of the three wars between them since.
The two countries claim the entirety of this Himalayan region mainly populated by Muslims where India has also been facing for more than thirty years a separatist insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of people, mainly civilians.
According to locals, tensions have increased since February 2019, when India staged an air attack on Pakistani territory in retaliation for a suicide bomber action that resulted in the deaths of 40 Indian soldiers in Kashmir.
India claims that the Pakistani bombings are used to cover up attempts to infiltrate, moreover on the increase, across the demarcation line to foment an insurgency against Indian power.
Read also: India ends the autonomy of Kashmir
Indian Kashmir has been under high security surveillance since India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revoked its semi-autonomy status and placed it directly under the authority of the national government in August 2019. .