Three women killed as India, Pakistan trade fire

JODHPUR: Indian Defense Minister Nirmala Sitharaman gestures on board a Sukhoi 30 at Indian Air Force Base in Jodhpur. —AFP

NEW DELHI: India tested its longest-range intercontinental missile yesterday, the defense ministry said, part of efforts to build a nuclear deterrent against neighboring Pakistan and China. The 5,000-km range (3,107-mile) Agni missile was tested from an island in India's eastern coast in the Bay of Bengal, the ministry said on its official Twitter account. It said the launch was "a major boost to the defense capabilities" of India. The Agni-V is an advanced version of the indigenously built Agni, or Fire, series, part of a program that started in the 1980s. It has been tested previously before. New Delhi says it faces a twin threat from both bitter foe Pakistan, which is developing a nuclear and missile program of its own, as well as China. A long-running dispute over the Himalayan border with China has flared in recent years.

India, Pakistan trade fire

In another development, three female civilians and a soldier have been killed in cross-border firing by the Indian and Pakistani armies, officials said yesterday, taking the death toll along the frontier to 13 this week. Police in India said they had evacuated villagers living near the firing, which had killed an Indian soldier and a woman civilian in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir state late Wednesday. Meanwhile a statement from the Pakistan army said Indian soldiers had fired on villages across the border in Sialkot in Punjab province late on Wednesday, killing two women. Both sides regularly trade fire along the border, parts of which are disputed, and civilian casualties are common.

But this week has been particularly bloody. On Monday Pakistan said four of its soldiers were killed during Indian firing along the heavily militarized Line of Control (LoC), the disputed section of the border in southern Kashmir. Also Monday, Indian soldiers killed five suspected militants who they said were trying to infiltrate from Pakistan-administered Kashmir. India frequently accuses Pakistan of sending fighters across the LoC to launch attacks on its soldiers in Kashmir, which has been divided between the two nuclear-armed neighbors since partition in 1947. Islamabad denies the allegations.- Agencies