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Srinagar/Uri: Sixty-five-year old Syeeda Begum lost her voice on the frightful night of May 9 when an artillery shell exploded on her family home in Gingle village along the Line of Control in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district. 

At around 9:30 PM, Begum’s family of two sons, their wives and nine children were scurrying to safety as the calm in their border village was intermittently shattered by loud explosions that seemed to be coming closer as the evening progressed into night.

As her son Mehmood Ali rushed out of the house with his terrified seven-year-old daughter in arms who had suffered a panic attack, an artillery shell tore through the roof, setting the house on fire.

“She is in shock,” says Ali, taking temporary shelter at a mosque that opened for the residents of the border town of Uri and its adjoining villages who have been displaced by Pakistan’s artillery shelling along the LoC and international border in the aftermath of ‘Operation Sindoor’.

A family sitting outside a temporary shelter after fleeing their home in Uri which was targeted by artillery shelling. Photo: Ubaid Mukhtar.

Ali, who works as an accountant with a local contractor, said that the loud blast and the visuals of their burning house also left his daughter traumatised.

“Whenever we mention our house, she shakes with fear and cries incessantly. She doesn’t want to return home,” Ali says, his tone heavy with grief.

Homes have become a nightmare for thousands of border residents in J&K who were displaced in the aftermath of the military operation against suspected terrorist bases in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

At least 19 border residents lost their lives while dozens were injured in the four-day aerial skirmishes between the armies of India and Pakistan which brought the South Asian region on the brink of a nuclear........

© The Wire