A villager shows the damage due to shelling at Jhangar. Tribune Photo: Inderjeet Singh

Amir Karim Tantray

Tribune News Service

Jhangar (LoC), May 14Damaged roofs, shattered windows and locked houses present a grim picture of heavy Pakistani shelling all along the Line of Control (LoC) in the Nowshera sector. The 85 mm and 120 mm mortars claimed two lives and injured three others in the area.People have been forced to leave their houses unattended and head towards migrant camps at safer places due to which villages all along the LoC look deserted.Jhangar is the last village of the Nowshera sector beyond which lies the LoC and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) from where shells were fired by the Pakistan army all day long yesterday. On Sunday, even those villagers, who had stayed back, were leaving along with their cattle to safer places.“Our family members left the village yesterday as it was not safe anymore to stay here. I stayed back to keep a take care of the cattle. Today, I am also leaving along with the cattle to a safer place,” said Jagdish Kumar, a resident Jhangar village.It was outside his cattle shed that Tufail Hussain and his granddaughter Asiya Banoo had died when a shell fell in the area.Describing the incident, Jagdish said, “Tufail, his wife Zaitoon Begum and granddaughter Asiya were inside when a shell hit their house. After the blast, they immediately came out and ran towards our house. Once they reached near the cow shed, another mortar shell hit a tree nearby, splinters of which hit them. Tufail and Asiya died on the spot whereas Zaitoon was critically injured.”Since then there is extreme fear in the area and no one wants to stay back fearing more shelling.A few people spent the night in the village after sending their elders and children to the migrant camps at Nowshera but they were not able to sleep due to the fear of shelling.Tears rolled down the cheeks of 65-year-old Sheila Devi of Jhangar village at the migrant camp in Government Boys Higher Secondary School, Nowshera, when her two sons reached there safely today from the village.Sheila said she was concerned about her sons as they didn’t accompany her to the camp yesterday and stayed back in the danger zone. “It was not good on their part to send us to a safer place and stay back in the village. I was very concerned about them,” she said.Talking about the situation, Sheila’s 35-year-old son Ramesh Chander said, “We have never seen such heavy shelling in our village. Previously, one or two shells used to land near the village but this time dozens of shells hit the houses and bylanes in the village. Earlier, many villagers used to migrate as a precautionary measure but a few persons used to stay back. However, this time the entire village has migrated.”In the migrant camp, more than 700 people have been adjusted even as ministers, legislators, officers and political workers made a beeline to meet them.