According to reports on Friday (May 2, 2025), the Indian Army retaliated after Pakistani forces used unjustified shooting along the Line of Control (LoC) and International Border (IB) in five districts of Jammu and Kashmir. Due to increased tensions after the terror attack in Pahalgam on April 22 that claimed 26 lives, this is the ninth night in a row that unprovoked gunfire has occurred along the LoC.
In order to make their communal and private bunkers livable in the event of shelling, civilians along the LoC and IB have started cleaning them. “During the night of May 1-2, 2025, Pakistani Army posts resorted to unprovoked small arms fire from posts across the LoC opposite Kupwara, Baramulla, Poonch, Naushera, and Akhnoor areas of Jammu and Kashmir,” a defence spokesperson in Jammu said.
According to the spokesperson, the Indian Army’s response was proportionate and well-calculated. Pakistan quickly extended their ceasefire breaches to the Poonch sector and then to the Akhnoor sector of the Jammu region after starting with unprovoked small arms firing at multiple positions along the LoC in the Kupwara and Baramulla districts of north Kashmir.
Small arms fire was then directed at a number of positions along the Line of Control in the Rajouri district’s Sunderbani and Naushera sectors. The firing then spread to the Jammu district’s Pargwal sector, which is located along the International Border. Despite a recent hotline exchange between India’s and Pakistan’s Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs), in which the Indian side is alleged to have warned Pakistan, the ceasefire violations have resumed.
Pakistani soldiers have been using unjustified shooting at several locations along the Line of Control in J&K, beginning in the Kashmir Valley, since the evening of April 24, just hours after India terminated the Indus Waters Treaty in response to the terror attack in Pahalgam. Pakistan banned all trade with India, closed the Wagah border crossing, barred Indian aircraft from using its airspace, and threatened to commit “act of war” if anyone tried to divert water.
In February 2021, both nations agreed to uphold the 2003 agreement in letter and spirit, reaffirming the truce along the boundaries. But the current state of affairs is a far cry from the relative quiet that has prevailed since. India shares a total of 3,323 km of border with Pakistan, divided into three parts: the International Border (IB), approximately 2,400 km from Gujarat to the northern banks of the Chenab River in Akhnoor, Jammu; the Line of Control (LoC), 740 km long, running from parts of Jammu to parts of Leh; and the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL), 110 km long, dividing the Siachen region from NJ 9842 to Indira Col in the north.
In order to make their communal and private bunkers livable in the event that bombardment escalated, civilians along the Line of Control and International Border began cleaning them. 14,460 individual and communal bunkers were authorized for building by the Union government in 2017. In five districts—Samba, Kathua, Jammu, Poonch, and Rajouri—more than 8,600 communal and private bunkers have been constructed, according to officials.
Crop harvesting is still ongoing in the districts of Kathua, Samba, Rajouri, and Poonch, however it is finished along the R S Pura and Arnia sectors of the IB. According to an official, “this is being done in view of the tensions along the borders,”
