India and Pakistan announce more casualties after fighting on the Kashmir border

India and Pakistan continued to exchange artillery fire along the border in the disputed Kashmir region on Thursday, a day after the worst clashes in two decades between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

According to the latest reports from both sides, the hostilities have resulted in at least 44 civilian deaths—31 on the Pakistani side and 13 on the Indian side. 

The New Delhi government also reported that one soldier was killed by Pakistani gunfire.

The Indian shelling of Pakistani border regions and the crossfire between the two armies in Kashmir mark a significant escalation in the crisis between the two countries.

The crisis began on April 22 with an attack in the tourist town of Pahalgam, located in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, which killed 26 people, mostly Hindus.

The Muslim-majority region has been divided between the two countries since their independence from the United Kingdom in 1947 and is the site of an insurgency by rebels who demand either independence or annexation to Pakistan.

India, which accuses Pakistan of supporting these insurgent groups, blamed the attack on its neighbor and threatened military action, which was carried out on Wednesday.

His army claimed to have destroyed nine "terrorist camps" in Pakistan with "precision airstrikes" in Kashmir and the border region of Punjab, which is home to more than half of the neighboring country's 240 million people.

Shortly after the bombings, the armies of both nations engaged in crossfire along the Kashmir border, which, according to the Indian armed forces, continued on Thursday.

"The Pakistani army fired unprovoked small arms and artillery fire" to which "the Indian army responded in a proportionate manner," a military statement from New Delhi said.

"We will avenge every last drop of blood of these martyrs," Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Wednesday night.

The day before, his armed forces claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets in the part of Kashmir administered by New Delhi.

Indian authorities did not officially confirm these losses, although a security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that three military aircraft had crashed in its territory.

The deadliest bombing by Indian aircraft struck an Islamic seminary near the town of Bahawalpur in Punjab. According to the Pakistani military, 13 people were killed in the attack.

Calls for restraint

An Indian military response to the April 22 attack, which was not claimed but which New Delhi attributes to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) jihadist group, had been anticipated for days.

The organization, designated a terrorist group by the UN, is suspected of carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which left 166 people dead.

India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars since their partition and independence from British rule in the Indian subcontinent.

"The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan," warned Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary General António Guterres.

British Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds offered his country's assistance in mediating to support a rapprochement between the two nations.

The United States, the EU, Russia and France also launched calls for restraint. "I want to see them stop," Donald Trump said at the White House.

The conflict extends beyond the military sphere. Hours before the bombings, Modi announced that his administration would cut off the flow of water from its rivers into Pakistan. Islamabad responded by saying it would consider such a move "an act of war."