Calm returns to Indo-Bangladesh border
Calm returns to Indo-Bangladesh border
GUWAHATI, India (AFP): The Indo-Bangladesh border was calm but tense on Friday, after fresh firing overnight had threatened to prolong the worst frontier skirmishes for 30 years which left 19 dead on both sides..
"There is a total ceasefire along the border," said Inspector General V.K. Gaur, regional commander of the Border Security Force (BSF) in northeast India.
One Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) soldier was killed in fresh fighting late Thursday in the Boraibari frontier area, a BDR official in Kurigram told AFP.
The official, who declined to be named, said there had been a lull in firing since dawn on Friday ahead of a field meeting between the two sides scheduled for 10:00 am (11 a.m. Jakarta time) in Boraibari.
The meeting aims to secure the handover of the bodies of 11 Indian BSF guards killed on Wednesday, he said.
After several days of fighting, the two sides appeared to agree Thursday on a mutual withdrawal to positions occupied before the clashes.
But there was renewed mortar and automatic weapons firing across the Bangladesh border with the northeastern Indian state of Assam late on Thursday.
"There was very heavy firing first from the BDR and then the BSF, which continued past midnight," said A.J. Baruah, police chief of the Assamese border district of Dhubri.
"The border is now calm and fighting has since stopped," Baruah said.
BSF chief Gaur said the fresh clashes may have been triggered by nervous border guards as they retreated to their respective sides of the border.
In an agreed statement on Thursday, both governments expressed regret at the loss of life and vowed to exercise restraint on the normally peaceful border.
In Dhaka, foreign ministry officials, confirmed the start of Friday's field meeting between local BDR and BSF commanders. "The meeting is expected to continue for several hours," one official said, quoted by the BSS news agency.
He added the BDR was expected to handover the bodies of five BSF men, whose post-mortems were already done. The bodies of the other BSF victims would be returned after the post-mortems.
Informed sources said the autopsies were done at a government hospital in northern Mymensingh, from where the bodies would be taken to the nearest frontier posts to be handed over.
The skirmishes followed a weekend clash in which Bangladesh seized a BSF outpost and occupied Pyrdiwah village in India's Meghalaya state.
In Bangladesh, where the village is known as Pudia, local media reported the BDR had retreated from the area on Thursday. Areas of the border have been in dispute since Bangladesh was created from the former East Pakistan in 1971.
The row centers around what is known as "adverse possession land" -- territory that after demarcation of the border should have been settled one way or the other, but is being held by one side while housing citizens of the other.
Indian newspapers on Friday stressed that heightened tensions on the border benefited neither side and called for a calm resolution of the unexpected flare-up.
"Restraint is the key to a solution. Anything else would prolong a wholly unneccesary quarrel," said an editorial in the Indian Express.
Most analysts agreed that upcoming elections in Bangladesh had helped spark the spat, with rival parties looking to gain from fanning nationalist sentiment.
"Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, it will not take long for chest-thumping patriots in this country to pick up the strain," the Indian Express warned.
New Delhi views Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed as the most India-friendly leader Bangladesh has had for a long time, but that mantle has caused her problems domestically.
"It is too early to predict how Bangladesh will manage the highly emotive issue, given especially the constant refrain of the opposition forces in that country about Hasina's presumptive pro-India bias," The Hindu newspaper said.