India, Pakistan exchange gunfire for second day

Indian and Pakistani troops have exchanged gunfire for a second consecutive day as ties plummeted between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

The conflict came on Saturday after an attack on tourists - blamed on Pakistani militants - killed 26 in India's Kashmir region.

The Indian Army said its troops responded to "unprovoked" small arms fire from multiple Pakistan Army posts that started around midnight on Friday along the 740km de facto border separating the Indian and Pakistani areas of Kashmir.

The Indian Army said Pakistani troops had also opened up with sporadic fire around midnight on Thursday. No casualties were reported from the Indian side, it said.

There was no immediate comment from the Pakistani military.

Kashmir's police have identified three suspects, including two Pakistani nationals, who carried out the April 22 attack. Pakistan has denied any involvement and its defence minister has said an international investigation was needed into the attack.

After the attack, India and Pakistan unleashed a raft of measures against each other, with Pakistan closing its airspace to Indian airlines, and India suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty that regulates water-sharing from the Indus River and its tributaries.

India and Pakistan have a decades-old ceasefire agreement over the disputed region of Kashmir but their troops still exchange gunfire sporadically. The two nations both claim Kashmir and have fought two of their three wars over it.

The attack triggered outrage and grief in India, along with calls for action against neighbour Pakistan, whom New Delhi accuses of funding and encouraging terrorism in Kashmir, a region both nations claim and have fought two wars over.

India's army chief visited Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir, and authorities scoured Pahalgam, the scenic town where the attack took place on Tuesday.

India has said there were Pakistani elements to the attack, in which 26 men were shot in a meadow. Islamabad has denied any involvement.

The nuclear-armed nations have unleashed a raft of measures against each other, with India putting the critical Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance and Pakistan closing its airspace to Indian airlines.

The treaty, negotiated in 1960, split the Indus River and its tributaries between the two countries and regulated water sharing.

Pakistan depends heavily on the Indus system for hydropower and irrigation, and has said any attempt to stop or divert its waters will be an "act of war".

Indian general Upendra Dwivedi visited Kashmir to review security a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to chase the perpetrators to the "ends of the earth".

Those killed in the attack came from all over India, Modi said.

Several leaders of Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have called for new military action against Pakistan.

The two countries both claim Muslim-majority Kashmir in full, but rule it in part. India, with its Hindu majority, has long accused Islamic Pakistan of aiding separatists who have battled security forces in Indian Kashmir - accusations Islamabad denies.

Indian officials say Tuesday's attack had "cross-border linkages" but did not elaborate on the links or share proof.

Authorities in Indian Kashmir demolished the houses of two suspected militants, one a suspect in Tuesday's attack, an official said.

Governments in many states ruled by Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have torn down what they say are illegal houses or shops belonging to people accused of crimes, many of them Muslims, in what has come to be known popularly as "instant, bulldozer justice".

In an unrelated incident, sporadic firing was reported along the Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, the Indian army said.