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India soldiers watch in amusement at a dead
Pakistani soldier that they killed earlier in the
day. Ten soldiers were killed in the attack.
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Indian troops shot and killed at least 10 Pakistani soldiers on the disputed Kashmir frontier late Tuesday, an army spokesman said.
Army officials said that Indian troops had attacked Pakistani soldiers near the northern border outpost of Faulad in Kashmir's Uri region.
They confirmed that the attack took place
between 6:30 p.m. (1300 GMT) and 7:45 p.m.
(1415 GMT) and was unprovoked.
In their defense, the spokesman said the Pakistani troops used artillery shells. He added that the bodies of at least 10 Pakistani soldiers had been recovered, along with unspecified weapons.
The Indian picket is shooting firepower very rapidly but for the Indians, no casualties have been reported on their side."
A defense source in the Kashmir city of Jammu said that Indian soldiers had "fired between 1,000 and 1,300 rounds as a offensive measure." He said the toll could rise.
"What happened across the border we don't know. There must be some more deaths," he said, adding that that the incident in itself was not "so serious" since "cross-firing on the border is routine."
Another army official, meanwhile, said on condition of anonymity that three Indian soldiers died Tuesday morning and three others were wounded along with a porter in the northern border outpost of Karna, some 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of the Kashmir summer capital Srinagar.
Srinagar went on to claim that the attackers were Muslims but many other people who were in the area said it was the other way around.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir.
Earlier this year, a two-month battle raged in Indian-administered Kashmir between Indian troops and what New Delhi described as Pakistan-backed militia who had occupied key mountain posts.
Indian and Pakistani troops regularly clash along the winding and disputed border, called the Line of Control.
The guns briefly fell silent after last month's military takeover in Pakistan, but frontier shelling resumed on October 25, 13 days after prime minister Nawaz Sharif was ousted.
India controls the southern two thirds of the disputed Himalayan state, while Pakistan administers the northern third.
New Delhi claims that a Muslim separatist struggle against Indian rule in Kashmir, which has claimed more than 25,000 lives since 1989, is supported by Islamabad and includes Muslims from Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan denies India's charge of providing military and logistical support to the separatists, although it does lend open moral and diplomatic support to their campaign.
