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Border residents still reluctant to return home

Hundreds of people have been killed and wounded and thousands rendered homeless this year because of heavy exchanges of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere along the border.

With Pakistan promising to stop Islamic militants from crossing into J&K, the border has fallen relatively silent amid signs of an easing of tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Officials in Pakistan and India said there has been no major incident of firing along the LoC in the last five or six days.

"But people are not willing to return to their villages (near the border)," Liquat Hussain, deputy commissioner of Rawalkot district in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir said.

If the situation remained 'calm and quiet like this' for another five or six days, the displaced would start returning home, he added.

Indian officials said no decision had yet been taken on whether to send people back to their villages.

However, police officials in Delhi said Defence Minister George Fernandes would visit border areas on Friday and talk to people who have fled their homes.

"They want to return but are reluctant as they are not sure how long this pause in firing is going to last," a police official in Muzaffarabad, the capital of PoK said.

Reuters

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