Pakistan, India trade border fire

ISLAMABAD(PAN security personnel, were wounded when Indian troops fired into Pakistan’s Siyalkot area in Punjab province on Sunday, security officials said, a day after an Indian soldier was killed by Pakistani troops.

Indian troops opened indiscriminate fire at one of security posts inside Pakistan late Saturday night, with gunshots hitting nearby civilian houses, Shah Nawaz, a Pakistani border security guards commander, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

As a result, he said, one civilian was killed and 10 others were wounded. The attack was repulsed when Pakistani troops returned fire, he said.

Majid, a resident of Sheikhopura area, said they heard heavy gunfire last night. Ten people in the area were injured in the incident. One of them died of his wounds in hospital, he said.

A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said three Pakistani troops were among 15 people injured in the attack.

The two sides exchanged small arms fire for 30 minutes early on Sunday at a border post 30 km (18 miles) from Jammu, the winter capital of the disputed Kashmir region in north India, foreign media reported.

A spokesman for the paramilitary Indian Border Security Force was quoted as saying that Pakistani soldiers opened unprovoked firing on their Umra Wali post, and they responded to their fire effectively.

A Pakistani border security official confirmed the clash, but denied starting it. Three Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were wounded, he said.

An Indian soldier died in hospital late on Saturday from bullet wounds sustained after Pakistani soldiers opened fire on a routine patrol in the same area, the Indian side said.He was the first Indian soldier killed by Pakistani troops in a year.

The two nuclear-armed rivals agreed a ceasefire in Kashmir in 2003 and while it has largely held, short exchanges of fire occur almost every month.

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