By Zahid Rafiq and Aamir Latif

SRINAGAR, Jammu and Kashmir and KARACHI, Pakistan (AA): Pakistan Monday strongly denied Indian claims that its forces had committed an atrocity along the border with disputed Jammu and Kashmir.

“Pakistan’s Army did not commit any cease-fire violation on the line of control or an action in the Buttal sector as alleged by India,” said an army statement.

India’s accusations that Pakistani troops mutilated its soldiers’ bodies are also false, the statement added.

The army is a highly professional force and shall never disrespect a soldier, even an Indian one, it added.

New Delhi accused a so-called Border Action Team of committing the mutilation, but Pakistan’s army has no such teams, according to the statement.

India claimed earlier Monday that two of its soldiers were killed in disputed Jammu and Kashmir along Pakistan’s border and their bodies were mutilated.

“Such a despicable act of the Pakistan Army will be appropriately responded to,” the Indian army said in a statement.

The armies of the two countries have regularly accused each other of mutilating the bodies of each other’s soldiers after killing them.

– 5 police officers dead in Kashmir attack

In a separate incident, suspected militants killed five policemen and two security guards, according to Indian police, in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district Monday afternoon when they attacked the cash van of a government-run bank.

The militant outfit Hizbul Mujahideen took responsibility for the attack, but claimed they had not killed the civilian bank guards or taken any money.

Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.

Since they were partitioned in 1947, Pakistan and India have fought three wars – in 1948, 1965 and 1971 – two of them over Kashmir.

Kashmiri resistance groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.

More than 70,000 people have reportedly been killed in the conflict since 1989. India maintains more than a half-million troops in the disputed region.

[Photo: Girl students run for safety after Indian police used chilli smoke during clashes in Srinagar the summer capital of Indian controlled Kashmir on April 24, 2017. Many students’ sustained injuries after Indian police used teargas shells, chili smoke, water cannons and stun grenades to disperse them. They were protesting against the Indian police raid in degree college Pulwama last week in which more than forty students got injured in police action. Photographer: Muhabiri Faisal Khan/AA]