NEW DELHI, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- India's defense minister says Pakistan still protects 27 militant training camps facing Kashmir.
The figure on terrorist camps were given in a written reply in Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Wednesday, according to a report by Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency from the Indian capital Wednesday.
There were still between 2,000 to 2,500 guerrillas at various camps and launching pads in Pakistan and in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir on the western side of the Line of Control, Mukherjee said.
The defence minister said a large number of terrorists had been observed close to the Line of Control waiting to infiltrate across it into Indian-controlled Kashmir. He also outlined the steps being taken to contain this infiltration, IRNA said.
Some 80,000 people have been killed in a guerilla war in overwhelmingly Muslim Jammu and Kashmir over the past 15 years. The conflict remains the greatest source of tension between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan despite the efforts of the Congress Party-led government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to improve relations over the past year.
