Schoolchildren learn emergency drills as Kashmir tensions rise

School playing fields in Azad Kashmir are being transformed into first aid camps for children to learn how to respond if war breaks out with India.

Wearing a protective helmet and a fluorescent vest, 13-year-old Konain Bibi listened attentively to her first aid lesson.

"With India threatening us, there's a possibility of war, so we'll all have to support each other," she told AFP.

Pakistan's government has warned that it has "credible intelligence" that India was planning an imminent military strike.

Already frosty relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have plummeted since a deadly assault on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-occupied Kashmir last week.

There are more than 6,000 schools, colleges and universities on the Pakistan side of the Kashmir border -- including 1,195 along the Line of Control (LoC).

Local authorities launched first aid training this week, teaching students how to jump out of a window, use an inflatable evacuation slide, or carry an injured person.

- 'Come straight home' -

In Muzaffarabad, the largest city in Azad Kashmir, training sessions have already taken place in 13 schools, according to emergency workers. "In an emergency, schools are the first to be affected, which is why we are starting evacuation training with schoolchildren," Abdul Basit Moughal, a trainer from Pakistan's Civil Defence directorate, told AFP.

The agency will deploy its rescue workers to schools bordering the LoC in the coming days.

"We're learning to help our friends and provide first aid in case India attacks us," said 12-year-old Faizan Ahmed as students watched an instructor handle a fire extinguisher.

Eleven-year-old Ali Raza added: "We have learned how to dress a wounded person, how to carry someone on a stretcher and how to put out a fire."

About 1.5 million people live near the Line of Control on the Pakistani side, where residents were preparing for violence by readying simple, mud-walled underground bunkers reinforced with concrete if they could afford it.

In Chakothi village, about three kilometres from the Line of Control, there are around 30 bunkers for a community of 60 families overlooked by Indian army check posts atop the surrounding green mountains.

"For a week we are living under constant fear," said Iftikhar Ahmad Mir, a 44-year-old shopkeeper in Chakothi.

"We are extremely worried about their safety on the way to school because the area was targeted by the Indian army in the past," he said of the village's children.

"We make sure they don't roam around after finishing their school and come straight home."

Religious schools close

Authorities in Azad Kashmir shut more than 1,000 religious schools Thursday over fears of possible military action from India.

Fearing a military escalation, Pakistani authorities shut more than 1,000 religious schools in Azad Kashmir. "We have announced a 10-day break for all madrassas in Kashmir," said Hafiz Nazeer Ahmed, head of the local religious affairs department.

A department source said it was "due to tensions at the border and the potential for conflict".