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June 2, 1999
Web posted at: 3:35 a.m. EDT (0735 GMT)

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - Three schoolchildren were killed on Wednesday when Indian firing hit a school in the disputed Kashmir region, the second school Pakistani police say has been hit in two days.

They said it was not immediately clear whether the school, in Nakial sector on the Pakistani side of the cease-fire line in Kashmir, 80 km (50 miles) east of Islamabad, was hit by mortar bombs or machinegun fire.

Pakistan said on Tuesday 10 schoolchildren were killed when Indian troops bombed a boys' school in Neelum valley, 120 km (75 miles) east of Muzaffarabad, the capital of the Pakistani part of Kashmir.

India has denied the accusation. "The report is false and...aimed at maligning the Indian army," an Indian Defence Ministry statement said on Tuesday.

In Wednesday's incident, local police said several children and two women were also injured, but gave no further details.

About 100 activists of Jamaat-i-Islami party protested outside the Indian High Commission in Islamabad on Wednesday against Tuesday's incident.

"Indian forces quit Kashmir," chanted the crowd.

India began a second week of air strikes on Wednesday on guerrillas holed up in northern Kashmir close to the military line of control dividing the Himalayan region.

Pakistan Foreign Ministry officials declined comment on when Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz would go to New Delhi to try to defuse the crisis in Kashmir, the worst since the neighbours fought their last war in 1971.

Pakistan at the weekend proposed sending Aziz to New Delhi for talks, an offer India accepted, but no date was set.

India has said its air strikes will continue until the infiltrators, which it says Pakistan backs, are evicted from Indian Kashmir.

Since the strikes began a week ago, the Indian Air Force has lost two fighter planes and a helicopter which was brought down by a Stinger missile.

Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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