India gives fitting reply to unprovoked Pakistan shelling at border; toll India 8, Pak 12

Jammu/New Delhi: Pakistan targeted 60 Indian posts along the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday night with firing and shelling, leaving 8 people injured, including 5 civilians.

The fresh attack came hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his first remarks on the escalating border crisis, said, "Everything will be fine soon."

Firing continued in Pargwal, Kanachak, Arnia, Samba sectors and BSF troops retaliated with heavy firing.

Firing went on through the night along the international border.

A man shows the broken glass pane of his house and mortar shell marks on the wall after firing from the Pakistani side at village Chilayari in Samba district, some 50 kms from Jammu (Photo: PTI)

Thousands took refuge in camps in Kashmir on Wednesday after some of the most intense fighting between nuclear-armed neighbours Pakistan and India.

A total of 17 civilians have been killed on both the sides, including 8 Indians and 9 Pakistanis, since fighting erupted more than week ago.

Read: Ceasefire violations continue: Everything will be fine on the border, assures PM Modi

Each side has accused the other of targeting civilians and unprovoked violations of a border truce that has largely held since 2003.

While exchanges of sporadic fire are common along the de facto border dividing the region, the number of civilian deaths is unusual. Two Indian civilians were killed on Wednesday and three Pakistani civilians died overnight, authorities said Wednesday morning.

A Border Security Force soldier being carried on a stretcher for treatment at the hospital after being injured in attacks between India-Pakistan firing at the border area in Ranbir Singh Pura, in Jammu (Photo: AP)

"We are all concerned and want an early solution to it (the fighting)," India's Air Chief Arup Raha said. "We don't want to let the issue become serious."

A senior official with the border security force said forces had retaliated for machine gun and mortar attacks on about 60 positions along a more than 200-km stretch of the border on Wednesday.

Read: Pak Army behind Rangers involved in ceasefire violations: Govt

Some 18,000 Indian civilians have fled their homes in the lowlands around Jammu to escape the fighting, taking refuge in schools and relief camps.

"If India and Pakistan troops have hostility, let them fight. What have we done to them?" said Gharo Devi, 50, in Arnia, where five civilians were killed on Monday.

"We left our homes in the dead of night and are living here in this school in a wretched condition. We have no food. We want end of the firing so that we can return home."

Children and women move to safer places on a tractor after shelling from the Pakistani side at village Chilayari in Samba district, some 50 kms from Jammu (Photo: PTI)

POLITICS WEIGHS HEAVILY

The fighting comes at a time of changing power dynamics, with Narendra Modi promising a more muscular foreign policy.

Read: LoC firing: India tells United Nations it is ready to retaliate

Modi is following through on a promise to take a harder line with Pakistan in its border disputes after being elected in May. Although Nawaz Sharif came to Modi's swearing-in, PM has since cancelled a round of talks with Pakistan, and in a further snub did not meet Sharif at a UN meeting in New York in September.