At least five people have been killed as Pakistani and Indian troops traded heavy fire in Kashmir today. The violence broke out only hours after the US Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld left the region.
Nine others were also wounded in firing across the frontline dividing Indian-ruled Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistani-held Kashmir and the province of Punjab, officials on both sides said.
On Thursday MR Rumsfeld said he believed the leaders of the two nuclear-armed neighbours were behaving responsibly but there was still a risk the two countries could slide toward conflict.
Officials in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-ruled Kashmir, said five people including a baby boy were killed and seven others wounded by Indian shelling this morning in border villages in the districts of Bagh, Rawalakot and Kotli.
Just south of Kashmir, local officials in Pakistan's Sialkot district, bordering the Indian city of Jammu, said a woman was wounded when her house, some seven km (four miles) from the border, was hit by a mortar shell.
An Indian official said a young girl was injured in shelling in a village in the Naushera sector in Indian-ruled Kashmir. "Some cattle have perished and houses damaged elsewhere on the border but there are no reports of any (fatal) casualties so far," he said.
Officials said the two armies exchanged heavy artillery, mortar and machinegun fire at several places along their frontier in the Himalayan region - at the heart of a crisis which has triggered fears of war.
Officials in Pakistani Kashmir said earlier there was intense shelling overnight but a complete lull early on Friday. However, Indian troops later started firing and Pakistani troops retaliated.
"As long as there is deployment of troops on the borders, nothing is certain," one official said. The two armies have exchanged heavy fire in Kashmir for the past month that has killed scores of civilians on both sides and forced thousands to flee their villages.
Tension flared first in mid-December after an attack on the Indian parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.