New Delhi Denies Pakistani Report of Indian Troops Attacking Posts

The Pakistani army said Monday that it had repulsed two Indian attacks on its forward posts in the north of the disputed Kashmir region, killing 18 soldiers in the first major clash after a guerrilla pullout.

The Indian troops attacked the posts Sunday night in the Siachen Glacier region after heavy artillery shelling, a Pakistani army spokesman said.

India denied the Pakistani report, which came two days after New Delhi reported the completion of the withdrawal of anti-Indian guerrillas from the nearby strategic mountains in the Kargil area.

This was the first report of a major clash in the area after the guerrilla pullout that ended the worst confrontation between the two nuclear-capable powers in 28 years.

The 20,000-foot high Siachen Glacier is the world’s highest battlefield, where Pakistani and Indian troops have been clashing since Indians seized the area in 1984.

The two countries have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region since their independence from Britain in 1947.

India’s army chief said the guns had fallen silent in Kashmir but the conflict wasn’t over.

“We can’t say yet that the war is over because the conditions are such that we don’t know when they might start bombardment again,” Gen. Ved Prakash Malik said.