\n<\/p>\n
The worry is running deep in the parts of Kashmir and the rest of India that are in range of Pakistani weapons \u2014 and beyond them, too.<\/p>\n
The India-administered region of Jammu and Kashmir has been under artillery bombardment by Pakistan since earlier this week. A broader swath of India, from Kashmir in the north to the desert towns of Jaisalmer and Bhuj in the west, are said to be within range of Pakistani drone and missile attacks.<\/p>\n
In Poonch, in the India-governed part of Kashmir, six miles from the \u201cline of control\u201d with the Pakistani part, Narinder Singh, a retired school principal, said that 13 people had been killed since India launched Operation Sindoor<\/a>, aimed at avenging the victims of the terrorist attack in Kashmir on April 22.<\/p>\n Pakistani shells have fallen on the Poonch district before, Mr. Singh said, but he noted, \u201cThis kind of shelling never has never taken place in Poonch town.\u201d Five of his neighbors have been killed by shrapnel in the past three days, he added. \u201cI don\u2019t remember that kind of shelling even during the 1971 war.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Singh said that the market in his town had closed and that very few people were in the streets. \u201cOnly some medical and grocery shops are open,\u201d he said. By Friday though, the shelling had intensified again, he said, and so had the sense of fear. During the later bombardments, he added, \u201cNo one was killed, because people had moved to safer houses and learned better how to stay safe.\u201d<\/p>\n In bigger cities of the northern Indian plains, 12 of which government officials said were the targets of Pakistani drone and missile attacks on Wednesday night, it also seemed that no one had been harmed. The sense of fear is real but vague, fed by a nationalistic press and social media.<\/p>\n In the northern Indian city of Gwalior, which is home to an air base, a civilian hospital had painted its rooftop with a red cross on a white field. Blackouts farther north, in Chandigarh, another city with a big military presence, were intended to protect sites from aerial attack. The measures have left Neha Chaudhary, a housewife, wondering what to tell her two sons.<\/p>\n \u201cA sense of stress has crept into them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ajay Sharma, a physiotherapist in Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan State, which shares a 665-mile border with Pakistan, said \u201cI have been stocking up on rations like rice and lentils and flour. I have withdrawn cash from banks.\u201d<\/p>\n Families in New Delhi, 220 miles from the border, are doing the same \u2014 and keeping their gas tanks filled, too. In response to the anxiety, India\u2019s national oil company posted that its reserves were sufficient and that there was \u201cno need for panic buying.\u201d<\/p>\n