India, Pakistan Battle 3 Days on Kashmir Glacier; 6 Killed

Indian and Pakistani soldiers waged a fierce three-day battle over a glacier high in the mountains along the disputed border of Kashmir, leaving six Pakistanis dead, an Indian general said Wednesday.

Lt. Gen. M.L. Chibber said Pakistani commandos from the elite Special Services Group and Pakistani-trained guerrillas attacked Indian positions on the Siachen Glacier during the first week of January in a new flare-up of a decades-old conflict.

The Siachen Glacier is a vast ice field feet high in the Karakoram Mountains near the border with China. Chibber said an Indian soldier standing watch at a frozen 19,685-foot lookout detected “these Pakistani guerrillas and commandos entering into the area clandestinely” and alerted others.

The Pakistanis were “equipped with the most sophisticated weapons” and “launched a two-pronged attack on our Indian pickets under the cover of heavy snow,” said Chibber, head of India’s northern command. He did not say what kinds of weapons were used.

“But our Indian troops courageously bore the brunt of their attacks and ultimately, after three days of fierce battle, repulsed their attacks and drove them back,” Chibber said. He said six Pakistanis were killed and more than a dozen wounded. He did not disclose Indian casualties.

In Islamabad, a Pakistani Ministry of Information spokesman said there was “more or less” of a standoff between Indian and Pakistani troops in the region but that he did not know anything about the fighting Chibber described.

According to Chibber, the January fighting was the third major clash in the region since last April. He accused the Pakistani government of launching all of them and said India repulsed each one.

Relations between India and Pakistan have been troubled ever since independence and the division of the subcontinent in 1947 into a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

The dispute, primarily over Kashmir, erupted into warfare along the border in 1947-48 and again in 1965. A third war in 1971 led to the creation of Bangladesh.

Both countries made an agreement in 1972 under which India occupies two-thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan one-third, but border clashes are common along the 750-mile cease-fire line.