By Jean Christou
AN INCIDENT in which shots were fired on Nicosia’s Green Line on Sunday night was blown out of all proportion, Unficyp said yesterday.
Initial reports from the occupied areas had one soldier dead and another injured in an alleged exchange of fire between Greek and Turkish Cypriot forces near Ayios Kassianos.
The reports were denied by the Cypriot authorities and later by the Turkish Cypriot side.
Unficyp said shots had been fired but had little detail.
“There are shootings on the Green Line quite often,” an Unficyp spokesman said. “This one was picked up and blown out of all proportion because of the prevailing situation.”
National Guardsmen also heard shots, but Defence officials said they had been fired from deep within the occupied areas.
The UN spokesman said the shots could have come from a firing range within the occupied areas or may have been an accidental discharge.
According to the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Kibris, the Ayios Kassianos area was “rocked by gunfire” on Sunday night.
The paper said first a single shot, then five to six more shots were head.
“Panicked by the gunfire, the residents poured out onto the streets and unusual activity was observed in the military units in the area,” Kibris said.
The paper quoted a Turkish source as saying there had been an exchange of fire between Greek and Turkish Cypriot soldiers after a Greek Cypriot was seen trying “to infiltrate the Turkish Cypriot guard post”.
The shots were fired after he was “told to stop,” the paper said.
The Defence Ministry, however, dismissed the reports.
“There was no exchange of gunfire. Shots were heard about 500 metres within the Turkish occupied areas,” a spokesman told the Cyprus News Agency (CNA).
“There were no shots either from a National Guard post to a Turkish occupation army outpost.”
The spokesman added that it seemed the Turkish side was “aiming to create some kind of tension”.
Government spokesman Manolis Christofides said the National Guard had heard shots but “these had nothing to do with the National Guard”.
Yesterday afternoon the Turkish forces also denied the reports that an exchange of fire had taken place.
According to Bayrak radio, only a few warning shots had been fired after a Turkish soldier saw a suspicious shadow “which could have been that of an animal”.
“The guard on duty saw some suspicious movements and he fired one or two shots into the air,” a Turkish Cypriot military official told Reuters in the north. “This is nothing important.”
Unficyp is investigating the incident with the police and military from both sides, the spokesman said.
In the area where the shots were heard, opposing forces are in close proximity, though not as close as they used to be.
“They are further apart since the 1989 unmanning agreement but it’s still not a matter of kilometres,” the Unficyp spokesman said.
