Brick By Brick, Then Boom: What Uri Lost In Minutes

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer)

Text by Taufiq Majeed

Photos by Faisal Khan

Days after the shelling stopped, Uri still smells like war. The border town is scorched and silent, its air thick with smoke, gunpowder, and the sting of burnt timber.

Amid the wreckage, a few residents are beginning to return. They're quiet, cautious, and unsure of what they'll find in the ruins of home.

“It smells of fire and fear,” said Roshan Kumar, standing where his shop once stood in Lagama.

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Kumar returned from Baramulla, stepping over cracked tiles and burnt signboards, searching for anything that could be salvaged.

“We built our lives brick by brick. It took minutes to lose everything.”

On the night of May 8, Pakistani artillery pounded Uri in what many call the most intense cross-border assault since 1948, when this region first came under fire during the foremost India-Pakistan war.

More than 50 homes and buildings were damaged in the recent flare-up. A woman was killed. Nine others, including children, were wounded. Bazaars burned, rooftops collapsed, and entire neighborhoods emptied overnight.

Now, survivors are trickling back, to see what remains of homes they fled in the dark. And what pieces of their lives can be carried out in plastic sacks and trembling hands.

In Salamabad, families picked through rubble with bare fingers. A broken cot. A rusted pressure cooker. A child's sweater, singed at the sleeves.

“We left with nothing,” said Bashira Bano, whose kitchen was flattened by a shell.“Now there is even less.”

Kalgai, once a vibrant cluster of homes near the Line of Control, is a skeleton of blackened walls and scorched fields.

In Bandi Market, Uri's commercial hub, the damage is complete. Several shops are reduced to warped shutters. A cow wandered through the ruins, unfazed. There was no one to shoo it away.

“It reminded us of 1948,” said Hakim ud din Choudhary, 85, walking the cracked streets of Gingal.

“Back then, the mountains had echoed with intense fire. It's happening again. Seventy-five years, and no bunkers, no safety. Just silence and smoke.”

The shelling followed India's launch of Operation Sindoor, a military response to a terror attack in Pahalgam that left 26 people dead. Uri subsequently was caught in the middle. The townspeople say they heard no warning. Only explosions.

Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha arrived in Uri on a rain-soaked Friday, flanked by a battery of bureaucrats. He walked past the charred remains of homes in Gingal and Lagama, promising immediate relief and long-term reconstruction.

“The nation stands with you,” he told a small gathering of residents. Ministers Sakina Ittoo and Javeed Dar also arrived and offered words of consolation and comfort.

Before these high-profile visitors, civil defense teams and local police were working around the clock, evacuating hundreds and delivering food and medical kits to scattered survivors.

But the psychological toll is harder to tend to.

Thirteen-year-old Bisma flinches upon hearing a loud sound. Her brother Ayan, 8, hasn't eaten properly in three days. The kids saw a shrapnel shattering their Salamabad home, before running for their lives.

“I covered the children with my body,” said their father, Abid Sheikh, a sanitation worker.“I thought it was the end.”

The night the bombs fell, Nargis Begum tried to flee with her family in their SUV. A shell ripped through the vehicle near Razarwani, killing her instantly. Her daughter's screams echoed through the region long after the shelling stopped. Now, neighbours pass their house without looking up.

Uri's pulse has purportedly paused. Most of the workforce has left. Markets are flattened. Schools are closed. Those who stayed behind move carefully, watching the sky, ears tuned for distant rumble.

Some families, like Molvi Zubair's, returned briefly to collect the elderly before vanishing again into safer districts.

“Our village is hollow now,” Zubair said.“The animals are alone. The courtyards are deserted. And we still don't know if we're safe.”

In Kamal Kote, locals are stockpiling ration bags and charging phones.“We're not sleeping,” said a mother as her daughter clung to her shawl.“Only waiting.”

The residents of Uri say they've lived on the frontline long enough to know what life on the Zero Line really means.

“War is easy from a distance,” said Saquib Bhatti, a college student who returned from Srinagar to help his neighbors evacuate.“The people here carry the cost. Every time.”

Uri is a ghost town, its streets troubled and torn. Those who come back find no peace, just fear that bombs will fall again, wiping out what's left of home.

Tomorrow feels as broken as the walls around them.

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