Officials in Islamabad say Pakistan and India are trying to de-escalate border tensions after their troops exchanged several rounds of gunfire over the last week in the disputed Kashmir region.
The officials said Tuesday that Pakistani adviser Nasser Khan Janjua spoke with India's security adviser Ajit Doval by phone briefly on Monday, discussing ways to restore calm.
It is the first high-level contact amid tensions that have been running high between the two nuclear arch-rivals since India claimed a militant attack in its part of Kashmir had killed 19 soldiers on Sept. 18.
Pakistan denied India conducted surgical strikes in its territory, saying only that cross-border firing took place in which two of its soldiers were killed.
The three officials, including a close aide of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information to the media. Monday's five-hour gunfire exchange caused no casualties.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met his allies and leaders of the opposition parties in the capital Islamabad in what appeared to be a show of unity. "Pakistan and Kashmir are inseparable," Sharif said at the meeting, adding, "We will continue supporting the freedom struggle in the valley." The leaders of political parties who spoke to the media after the meeting said they would stand by the Kashmiri people in their "just struggle for liberation from tyrannic Indian rule."
During Sunday night, militants attacked an army camp in India-administered Kashmir, killing one border guard, according to local police. A group of up to four militants opened fire and threw grenades near an army camp in Baramulla district, area police chief Imtiyaz Hussain told reporters. A guard from the Border Security Force unit adjoining the army camp was killed and another was injured in a gun battle that continued for more than two hours, he said.
Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in its entirety and have fought two wars over the region since their independence from Britain in 1947. Most people in the Indian-controlled portion favor independence or a merger with Pakistan. A militant uprising and subsequent Indian military crackdown have killed more than 68,000 people since 1989.
Kashmir is witnessing its largest protests against Indian rule in recent years, sparked by the July 8 killing of a popular rebel commander by Indian soldiers. The protests, and a sweeping security crackdown, have all but paralyzed life in the region.
