Authorities have closed over 1,000 religious schools in Pakistan-administered Kashmir as fears of conflict grow, with residents preparing walled bunkers in anticipation of possible hostilities amid heightened tensions with India.
India blames Pakistan for the gun attack that killed 26 people on April 22 in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi providing his military “complete operational freedom” to deal with it.
Denying any involvement in the attack, Pakistan has said it has “credible evidence” that India is now planning an imminent military strike, promising that “any act of aggression will be met with a decisive response”.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in a televised statement early on Wednesday that the attack could take place in the “next 24 to 36 hours”.
Fearing a military escalation, authorities have shut more than 1,000 religious schools in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
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“We have announced a 10-day break for all madrassas in Kashmir,” Hafiz Nazeer Ahmed, head of the local religious affairs department told the AFP news agency.
A department source said it was “due to tensions at the border and the potential for conflict”.
About 1.5 million people live near the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, where residents are also readying simple, mud-walled underground bunkers – reinforced with concrete if they can afford it.
“For one week we have been living in constant fear, particularly concerning the safety of our children,” Iftikhar Ahmad Mir, a 44-year-old shopkeeper in Chakothi near the LoC, told AFP.
“We make sure they don’t roam around after finishing their school and come straight home.”
Emergency services workers in Muzaffarabad, the main city in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, have also begun training schoolchildren on what to do if India attacks.
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“We have learned how to dress a wounded person, how to carry someone on a stretcher and how to put out a fire,” said 11-year-old Ali Raza.
On Wednesday, Modi chaired a Cabinet Committee on Security meeting, the second such meeting since the Pahalgam attack, the state-run Doordarshan broadcaster reported.
Meanwhile, as the neighbours continued to exchange gunfire along the LoC dividing Indian and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, other world leaders stepped up diplomacy in an attempt to ease spiralling tensions.
India also closed its airspace to Pakistani planes, after Pakistan banned Indian planes from overflying.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has urged the United States to press India to “dial down the rhetoric and act responsibly”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asked both nations to “de-escalate tensions,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement on Wednesday.
Rubio “urged Pakistani officials’ cooperation in investigating this unconscionable attack”, according to White House spokesperson Tammy Bruce.
Also on Tuesday, the spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that he had spoken to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, offering his help in “de-escalation”.
While it is unclear what course of action India could take, it has in the past used a range of military tactics like covert military operations, publicised surgical strikes, aerial strikes, attempts at taking over Pakistan-controlled land, naval missions and a full-blown military conflict.
India and Pakistan have fought over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir since the violent end of British rule in 1947.
Rebels in the Indian-run area of Kashmir have waged an armed rebellion since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.
The worst attack in recent years in Indian-run Kashmir was at Pulwama in 2019, when a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a security forces convoy, killing 40 people and wounding 35.
