Uri’s 72 hours: Tuesday’s peace, Wednesday’s fire, Thursday’s ashes

URI: Charred walls, shattered rooftops, and silence marked Nowpora village of Uri in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district Thursday morning as residents returned to ruins left by heavy overnight Pakistani shelling. Tahir Talib, 22, stood in front of what used to be his home. “I work as a salesman in Srinagar. We built this house with hard-earned money.It’s gone now. I don’t know where my family will live,” he said.Uri, long shaped by its proximity to LoC, has endured flashes of conflict before. On Sept 18, 2016, a terrorist assault on an Army base killed 19 soldiers, triggering Indian surgical strikes and Pakistani shelling. Yet this border region saw relative peace.Uri’s calm, intact through Tuesday, was broken in darkness. On Tuesday, TOI saw bustling streets, children attend school and play cricket, construction crews work on road widening, and radio updates crackle in Tulawari village as Ghulam Hassan, 75, kept a cautious ear to unfolding news after the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam.By early Wednesday, shelling from across LoC ripped through Uri sector. Mortar fire wounded many, reduced homes to rubble, and emptied roads. In Tulawari, Hassan and his grandchildren huddled inside a bunker as shells thundered overhead. “We stayed there for the rest of the night,” he said. By afternoon, he returned home, unsure of what dusk might bring.For Talib, who was in Srinagar, the worst came just after a late-night phone call from his brother Sahil. “Intense mortar fire is ongoing,” Sahil said. Tahir urged him to stay indoors. Minutes later, a mortar shell struck their house. “Luckily my family had shifted to another house,” Tahir said. “They couldn’t save anything except the clothes they were wearing.” His family fled to Boniyar once firing ceased at dawn.Neighbour Abdul Qayoom Mir, 52, returned Thursday morning to check on his livestock and assess damage. Around 2am Wednesday, three mortar shells flew over rooftops, followed by several more.“When the mortars exploded, it felt like death was coming. I thought we were all going to die,” he said. At least three houses in Nowpora were completely destroyed. Many villagers fled to Baramulla or took refuge with relatives in Boniyar.Mir, like others, had pleaded for bunkers over years. But after 2003’s ceasefire and resumption of Srinagar-Muzaffarabad trade in 2005, appeals faded. “I left Wednesday morning for Baramulla with my wife and three children. Now they are staying there,” he said. “I have never seen such devastating shelling. Hope there will be peace.” By Thursday afternoon, Mir planned to leave again.Uri’s markets, buzzing till Tuesday, remain shuttered. Bulldozers and labourers abandoned construction near Uri-I and Uri-II hydro projects. Around four emergency service vehicles now patrol shell-hit zones. Most of Nowpora lies vacated. Some residents, like Talib and Mir, continued brief returns to protect livestock and salvage what they can from homes left in ruins.