Mohammad Naseem claims his neighbours ridiculed him when he took loans and constructed a concrete bunker beneath his house in a village along the disputed Kashmir frontier.
But last week when mortar shells poured into Salamabad, 38 individuals — males, females, and kids — took shelter inside it while around a dozen shells detonated outside in rapid succession. We took our children and ran indoors. It became so crowded that eventually, we suffocated, two of our children fainted,” he explained.
“The children had to be hospitalised after dawn when the shelling ceased.” Other villagers took cover behind boulders and bushes on mountain slopes. Some witnessed their houses being brought down to the ground.
Fatal clashes between nuclear-powered India and Pakistan broke out after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for supporting an April 22 assault on tourists on the Indian-held side of the disputed region, which left 26 dead.
“We pulled our children out and climbed up the mountain slope holding them tight as bombs went off around us,” Naseer Ahmed Khan, 50, told Reuters outside his wrecked home on Thursday. Our life is not worth anything. At any moment whole families might be annihilated,” Khan stated. “Our children cannot sleep and we cannot eat in peace.”
The heavy crossfire has brought down or significantly damaged dozens of houses in Uri, some 100 kilometres (66 miles) from Srinagar, forcing residents to run to the safer zones of towns such as Baramulla, some 50 kilometres away.
Local legislator Sajjad Shafi stated to AFP that some 22,000, or around 10 per cent, of the residents of Uri, escaped since fresh clashes erupted. Friday saw many more fleeing in buses and government-provided trucks or driving away in their vehicles.
“How do we remain here?” Rubina Begum cried outside her ruined house. “The government ought to accommodate us somewhere secure”. Begum’s daughter, Saima Talib, joined: “We have nothing left but what we are wearing”. Displaced persons are unable to find food and employment and are now seeking refuge in government offices in Uri.
