Madasar Choudhary said his sister saw two children killed in the town of Poonch that bore the brunt of this week’s shelling by Pakistan, with India saying a total of 13 people died there.”She saw two children running out of her neighbour’s house and screamed for them to get back inside,” Choudhary, 29, from the town in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir that was bombarded on Wednesday, told AFP.”But shrapnel hit the children — and they eventually died,” Choudhary said. His sister was still too distraught to talk.The deadly artillery barrage that killed a total of 16 people and injured dozens more hours after India launched strikes on Pakistan.Those was in response to an attack in the disputed Kashmir region on April 22 that killed 26 people and which New Delhi blamed on Islamabad — a charge it rejects.Islamabad said that the Indian strikes and firing along the border has killed 31 civilians.- Shattered glass -Dazed, shocked and in mourning, other Poonch residents described being terrified in the long hours of bombardment that began in the dead of night.”A shell fell… It was right next to our house, where we were. It fell and we panicked… a glass window shattered,” said Shariyar Ali, 25, a student.Ali, like hundreds of others, has since fled with his family some 30 kilometres (20 miles) away to the small town of Surankote, further away from the range of the guns.”The shelling around my home caused many casualties”, said Kumail Nadeem, 25, another student who ran from Poonch. “We knew personally those killed.””We have seen shelling before, the border is like three kilometres away,” said Zaheer Ahmed Banday, 30, who runs a small shop in Poonch.”But when they hit the city, that was unexpected. I picked up a shirt and trousers, phone and charger, and left the house as is.”- ‘Each drop of blood’ -Much of Poonch — where buildings hit by artillery fire could be seen — is now deserted, but a few people have stayed.”Where can we go?” said businessman Arvinder Pal Singh, 40, who had hunkered down with his wife, two children and parents during the shelling.”We spent the night huddled on the ground floor of our house. We haven’t seen this fear and shelling like this — ever.”Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in an address to the nation late Wednesday, vowed to “avenge each drop of the blood” of those killed by India’s strikes.”Everyone is afraid”, said Sohail Sarwar, 30, a shopkeeper in Surankote.This was echoed by fellow grocery store owner, Sanjay Ghai, 60, who said people were buying essential items in case of more bombardment.”There is so much fear and panic about what could happen in the coming days. People are stocking up,” Ghai told AFP.India and Pakistan have fought multiple times since the violent end of British rule in 1947, when colonial officers drew straight-line borders on maps to partition the nations, dividing communities.Muslim-majority Kashmir — claimed by both India and Pakistan — has been a repeated flashpoint.But for younger generations, the violence was the worst they had witnessed.”I have never seen such intense shelling in my lifetime, it is something that my parents used to tell us about”, added Nadeem. “It is something very new for us, which is why we are also afraid.”Iqbal Singh, 75, a tailor in Poonch, was the only non-essential business open in the market on Thursday.”I’ve lived through 1965, 1971, 1999 wars and everything in between. This is just another episode. It’s okay,” he told AFP at his shop next to a Sikh temple that was damaged in the shelling.”It too shall pass.”

Pakistan’s army said Thursday it shot down 25 Indian drones, a day after the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades.Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to retaliate after India launched deadly missile strikes on Wednesday morning, escalating days of gunfire along their border.At least 45 deaths were reported from both sides following Wednesday’s violence, including children.Pakistan’s military said in a statement Thursday that it had “so far shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones” at multiple location across the country. “Last night, India showed another act of aggression by sending drones to multiple locations,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said from the army’s headquarters in Rawalpindi, where a drone was downed.”One managed to engage in a military target near Lahore,” he said, adding that four troops in the city were injured.He earlier said the operation was ongoing.One civilian was killed and another injured in Sindh as a result of the drone incidents. Crowds gathered at crash sites, some close to army installations, to gaze at the debris. Blasts could be heard across Lahore.The Civil Aviation Authority said Karachi airport was closed until 6 pm (1300 GMT), while Islamabad and Lahore were briefly shut “for operational reasons”.Pakistan and Indian have fought several wars over the Muslim-majority disputed region of Kashmir — divided between the two but claimed in full by both.”We will avenge each drop of the blood of these martyrs,” Sharif said, in an address to the nation.- ‘Right to respond’ -Speaking after the Wednesday missile strike, India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said New Delhi had a “right to respond” following an attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Kashmir last month, when gunmen killed 26 people, mainly Hindu men.New Delhi blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba — a UN-designated terrorist organisation for the Pahalgam shooting, and the nations traded days of threats and diplomatic measures.Pakistan has denied any involvement and called for an independent investigation into the April 22 attack.India said on Wednesday it had destroyed nine “terrorist camps” in Pakistan in “focused, measured and non-escalatory” strikes.Islamabad said Wednesday that 31 civilians were killed by Indian strikes and firing along the border.New Delhi said 13 civilians and a soldier had been killed by Pakistani fire.Pakistan’s military also said five Indian jets had been downed across the border, but New Delhi has not responded to the claims.An Indian senior security source, who asked not to be named, said three of its fighter jets had crashed on home territory.- ‘Screamed’ -The largest Indian strike was on an Islamic seminary near the Punjabi city of Bahawalpur, killing 13 people according to the Pakistan military. Muhammad Riaz said he and his family had been made homeless after Indian strikes hit Muzaffarabad, the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.”There is no place to live,” he said. “There is no space at the house of our relatives. We are very upset, we have nowhere to go.”On the Indian side of the frontier on Wednesday, Madasar Choudhary, 29, described how his sister saw two children killed in Poonch, where Pakistan military carried out shelling. “She saw two children running out of her neighbour’s house and screamed for them to get back inside,” Choudhary said, narrating her account because she was too shocked to speak.”But shrapnel hit the children — and they eventually died.”- ‘No pushover’ -India on Thursday braced for Pakistan’s threatened retaliation.In an editorial on Thursday, the Indian Express wrote “there is no reason to believe that the Pakistan Army has been chastened by the Indian airstrikes”, adding that Indian military experts were “aware that Pakistan’s armed forces are no pushover”.”Border districts on high alert,” The Hindu newspaper headline read, adding that “India must be prepared for escalatory action” by Pakistan.Diplomats and world leaders have pressured both countries to step back from the brink.”I want to see them stop,” US President Donald Trump said Wednesday.Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is slated to meet his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Thursday in New Delhi, days after visiting Pakistan, as Tehran seeks to mediate.Analysts said they were fully expecting Pakistani military action to “save face” in a response to India.”India’s limited objectives are met,” said Happymon Jacob, director of the New Delhi-based think tank Council for Strategic and Defence Research.”Pakistan has a limited objective of ensuring that it carries out a retaliatory strike to save face domestically and internationally. So, that is likely to happen.”Based on past conflicts, he believed it would “likely end in a few iterations of exchange of long-range gunfire or missiles into each other’s territory”. burs-pjm/ecl/lb