NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India and Pakistan rushed troops and military hardware on Sunday to the tense frontier where at least three people were reported killed in the latest exchanges of fire between South Asia's nuclear rivals. (Read photo caption below)
Islamabad and New Delhi each said they were responding to a build-up of forces by the other as tension mounted following a guerrilla attack on its parliament on December 13 that India has blamed on Islamist militant groups based in Muslim Pakistan.
Both countries have rallied behind the United States' war on terrorism and President Bush said on Friday he was ``very much involved'' in cooling tensions between the two, which have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947 and each tested nuclear weapons three years ago.
Indian officials said two Indian paramilitary border guards were killed and three wounded when Pakistani troops opened fire on the border of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
Pakistani officials said Indian shooting at various points along the Line of Control dividing Kashmir killed one civilian and wounded eight on the Pakistani side on Sunday.
The two sides exchanged heavy machinegun and mortar fire at several places along the mountain frontier created in 1948 by a cease-fire in the first of two wars over Kashmir.
India, which accuses Pakistan of fomenting a decade-old revolt in mainly Muslim Kashmir, recalled its envoy from Islamabad on Friday, accusing Pakistan of failing to act against terrorism. It is also cutting cross-border bus and rail links.
On Saturday, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf called the move a ``very arrogant and knee-jerk'' response, prompting India to describe his remarks on Sunday as ``extremely regrettable.''
PHOTO CAPTION:
An Indian Sikh para-military trooper keeps watch from inside a bunker in downtown Srinagar, December 23, 2001. India has moved troops closer to its border with Pakistan in response to what it claims similar moves by Pakistan, the Press Trust of India quoted the Defense Minister as saying on Sunday. Tension has been running high between the two hostile neighbors since a December 13 suicide attack by five gunmen on India's parliament which New Delhi blamed on two Pakistan-based militant groups. (Altaf Hussain/Reuters)