Srinagar, Kashmir managed by India - An unwise female voice is an unwise female voice when the camera surrounds a house blown up by a mortar fire in Poonch.

“This is a disaster.”

Shared with locals in Poonch, the video reveals a collapsed staircase, a large crater on the walls, and a garbled courtyard with chaotic garage and painted with blood.

"Everything I built is ruins," the voice screamed, filled with pain.

Since early May 7, at least 11 people from Pakistan have killed Indian-managed Kashmir from Pakistan in retaliation for Indian missile strikes that have struck several locations in Pakistan's Punjab province and Pakistan-ruled Kashmir.

India's strike itself is a response to the fatal attack on tourists in Pahalgam, which manages Kashmir in India on April 22 - the most extensive attack on Pakistan since the 1971 war, which ended in eastern Pakistan, created by Bangladesh.

However, as nuclear-weapon neighbors stand on the brink of potential military conflict, many Kashmiris say they are facing the brunt of tensions. According to locals and experts, Pakistan bombed Indian-managed Kashmir on Wednesday night, the most intense shelling of villages and towns in the region in more than 40 years.

“It was a horrible night,” Poonch resident Rameez Choudhary told Al Jazeera.

Officials told Al Jazeera that the deceased included two siblings who were killed after the explosion on the house. Two local store owners were hit by rain bombs; a seven-year-old child; a teenage boy; a 35-year-old housewife; and four other men.

The worst hit villages in the Poonch area were Shahpur, Mankote and Krishna Ghati, and the shelling was also intensified in the Laam, Manjakote and Gambhir Brahmana areas of the Rajouri area as residents fled to safety.

"This war has been forced to come upon us."

Two weeks ago, the border skirmishes occurred in the deadly attacks in the Indian-managed tourist destination in Kashmir, where 26 people, mostly Indian tourists on vacation in the disputed area were killed.

In the early hours of Wednesday, Indian military fighter jets crossed the skyline and fired missiles and other ammunition at neighboring Pakistan. Indian authorities said they targeted at least nine locations in Pakistan.

India accused Pakistan of supporting armed groups attacking Indian tourists. However, Pakistan denied the allegation. India claims its missiles hit the "terrorist base", but Pakistan said the strike killed 31 people, all of whom were "innocent civilians."

The scale and spread of current military tensions - India has attacked four cities hundreds of kilometers in Pakistan's Punjab province, in addition to the ruins of the Kashmir region managed by Pakistan, which in some way made them even worse than the last war between neighboring countries in 1999.

At that time, soldiers from Pakistani troops disguised as rebel soldiers and in the snow-covered snowy mountains of Kargil, in fact, under the control of India, led to conflict. Hundreds of soldiers were killed on both sides, but the battle from this week was against Kagil.

"This war has been forced to be imposed on us. The (Pahalgam) attack is intended to cause a situation where we have no choice but to fight back," said a New Delhi Think Tank, a New Delhi think tank, who is also a former official of the National Security Council of India.

To be sure, the countries encountered war in 2019 after a fatal attack on the town of Pulwama in southern South Kashmir, when a suicide bomber blew up the Indian paramilitary convoy and killed 40 Indian soldiers. Indian fighter jets fired missiles and attacked Balakot in Pakistan-managed Kashmir.

But according to Kartha, the current crisis is different.

"Both sides carefully manage 2019. Everything is limited to certain restrictions. But this time, it is cruel." She said, "India is already very mature." However, Pakistan’s military and civilian government accused India of inciting the flames of war and escalating tensions.

The Kashmiris were caught in the front line of their confrontation. Three different areas of the Indian-managed Kashmir region were hit by Pakistani shelling on Wednesday.

"Initially, we thought it was thunder. The sky was rumbling at 1 a.m.," Altaf Amin, a 22-year-old resident of Poonch Chandak Village, told Al Jazeera.

"We don't want war"

Poonch is only 10 km (6 miles) from the Line of Control (LOC), a disputed border that separates Indian and Pakistan-controlled territory. "The shelling has been going on since yesterday. But now, it has stopped."

Social media was quickly flooded with videos, showing the severity of human losses from border shelling. Al Jazeera certified authenticity clips show a teenage boy being taken into the blood of a van in Poonch. One of his arms was blown open. Different segments in the same clip show the body of a lifeless child whose head is torn apart by the shell.

Amid all this, a voice that avoided was loud and clear: "We don't want to fight," Amin said.

However, there is also anger at the ground of local authorities.

"Ponchi people get angry because they don't try to evacuate them," Zafar Choudhary, a political analyst and experienced journalist, told Al Jazeera.

Choudhary said the Indian government should anticipate a strike on the Pakistani side and that people should evacuate people to avoid casualties.

"But none of this happened, which made people angry. Whenever trouble broke out between the two warring countries, the people in these mountainous areas were at the brunt of the brunt," he said.

The silent gun roared again

LOC crosses a 740km (459m) circular route through the mountains, forest ridges, alpine lakes and rivers of the disputed Kashmir region. This line appeared in 1949 after the first war between the newly independent India and Pakistan and Kashmir.

When both countries gathered their troops to claim picturesque areas, they eventually settled in a stalemate, forcing them to recognize each other’s influence areas. The ceasefire line is recognized by the United Nations, which attempts to mediate the referendum in Kashmir so that its people can choose their future.

The vote never happened, and the two countries occasionally continued to shoot along the disputed border. After Pakistan's loss to India in 1971, the ceasefire line was renamed LOC. In 2003, the more than a decade-long uprising in Kashmir began to fade, and the two countries embarked on a peace process to ease hostilities, and India took advantage of the truce to carry the piano with the piano wire.

The two countries agreed to renew a ceasefire agreement in 2021.

Four years later, the agreement was effective in rags.

“This kind of shelling is unprecedented”

Amin, a villager in Chandak, said guns were relatively stationary despite artillery prevalence in border areas, as both countries reiterated the 2003 ceasefire agreement four years ago. "We are familiar with cross-border shelling. But this kind of shelling is unprecedented."

Another resident of Poonch is where most of the damage occurs, he said people there have now begun following a series of war agreements announced by the government, including the construction of temporary bunkers.

Residents say many of Chandak's schools have been converted into relief centers and provide regulations on food and other essentials.

Nearly 260 km (162 miles) from the Poonch district, residents of Salamabad Uri, a border village in the Baramulla district in northern Kashmir, also fled their homes.

“Last night, the shelling was so intense that two houses were burned and many were injured in the fire across the border,” said Mushtaq Ahmad, a taxi driver in the village. Ahmed has moved to Uri Town now.

Salamabad was beaten by a pine-covered plot in Pakistan and had been destroyed by nearly continuous shelling. The powerful explosion has ripped off corrugated iron roofs from the houses, exposing them to the dazzling sunlight. The hell caused by the shelling emanates from the community, leaving behind smoldering pieces.

"We are worried about the worst," Ahmed said, adding that his two 9 and 11-year-old daughters were frightened.

"They asked why it happened? Will we be killed?" Ahmed said, adding that the cross-border shelling began at 2 a.m. Wednesday and left two minors - a 13-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy - were injured.

Ghulam Muhammad Chopan, 80, said he felt too old to leave the house but had no choice.

"At this age, I had to leave my house. At night, the fire was so intense that at dawn, the village was empty. Everyone ran away."

In Wuyan Town, Pampore, a highland area surrounded by a maze where precious Kashmir saffron grows, town residents say they were shocked from sleep at 1:30 a.m. after hearing a loud noise.

"The fireball exploded," said resident Gulzar Ahmad. "I could see two planes. One of them returned quickly. But the other plane exploded and the wreckage fell into the school's playground. Later, it began to emit irritating smoke, attracting a lot of people."

Pakistan claims it shot down five Indian fighters on Wednesday morning. Although multiple independent reports suggest that at least three aircraft did have been shot down, India has not confirmed any such losses.

As uncertainty over escalating tensions between India and Pakistan continues, Indian-managed Kashmir locals are fearful and uncertain about their future.

Residents have begun to hoard food, fuel and other necessary items, anxious and desperate to survive the violence they have never invited.

"War should never be happy about war. When the shell hits, they won't ask who you are," said Farooq Ahmad, a resident of Uri Kamalkote Village. “Those who demand war don’t know what it feels like when the shells fall on the child when they fall asleep at night.”