☰

Global

Border guard shot dead before India-Pakistan talks, says India


    SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - A Pakistani sniper shot dead an Indian border guard in the disputed region of Kashmir on Thursday, Indian authorities said, a day before the two countries' prime ministers were due to hold their first meeting in more than seven months.The sniper fired three bullets at an Indian border post in Baramulla in northern Kashmir, killing the man, a police official and army officer said.It was the third time the military had reported the killing of an Indian border guard or soldier by Pakistani gunmen in the last week. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet with his counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Russia on Friday.

    Since being elected a year ago, Modi has taken a more robust approach to Pakistan.India and Pakistan were engaged in their most intense fighting along their frontier for at least a decade last year, dashing hopes that a brief thaw in relations after Modi was elected would improve relations.The Indian government abruptly called off talks between their foreign secretaries in August, incensed that Pakistan's envoy in New Delhi had hosted Kashmiri separatists in the run-up to those talks.

    India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over the mostly-Muslim region of Kashmir.

    (Reporting by Fayaz Bukhari; Editing by Andrew MacAskill and Andrew Roche)