An Indian soldier and two civilians were critically injured in cross-border shelling between Indian and Pakistani soldiers, who today continued to trade intense artillery fire across the Kashmiri borders, police said.
"An Indian soldier was injured when a shell hit a boulder near a post he was guarding in Poonch sector," a police spokesman said this afternoon. "Heavy shelling is still going on in seven regions in the sector."
Overnight, a woman and a man were injured in Poonch, one of the main flashpoints along the Line of Control, the de facto border in disputed Kashmir, since India and Pakistan began fierce artillery duels following a massacre by Islamic militants in Indian Kashmir four weeks ago.
Five regions along the 185-kilometre international border were also targeted overnight by Pakistani soldiers, the spokesman said.
In the Rajouri and Nowshera sectors, both west of Kashmir's winter capital Jammu, troops of the nuclear-armed rivals exchanged more than 250 shells, he said.
The spokesman said the exchange of mortar and artillery fire was continuing in the Nowshera region.
Yesterday, two Indian villagers died in shelling in Kashmir, taking the number of people killed on the Indian side of the divide to 37 since the escalation began.
Pakistani officials have put the toll on their side at more than 90.
More than a million Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been posted on their borders since an attack on parliament in New Delhi in December, which India blames on Pakistan-based militants.
Kashmir, claimed by both India and Pakistan, has been the cause of two of the three wars between the nuclear-armed rivals.
AFP