In­di­an and Pak­istani sol­diers ex­changed heavy vol­leys of shells and gun­fire across their fron­tier in Kash­mir overnight, killing at least five civil­ians in a grow­ing mil­i­tary stand­off that erupt­ed fol­low­ing an at­tack on tourists in the In­dia-con­trolled por­tion of the dis­put­ed re­gion.

In Pak­istan, an un­usu­al­ly in­tense night of ar­tillery ex­changes left at least four civil­ians dead and wound­ed 12 oth­ers in ar­eas near the Line of Con­trol that di­vides Kash­mir, lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cial Adeel Ah­mad said.

Peo­ple in bor­der towns said the fir­ing con­tin­ued well in­to Fri­day morn­ing.

“We’re used to hear­ing ex­change of fire be­tween Pak­istan and In­dia at the Line of Con­trol, but last night was dif­fer­ent,” said Mo­ham­mad Shak­il, who lives near the fron­tier in Chakothi sec­tor.

In In­dia, mil­i­tary of­fi­cials said Pak­istani troops bar­raged their posts overnight with ar­tillery, mor­tars and gun­fire at mul­ti­ple lo­ca­tions in In­di­an-con­trolled Kash­mir. They said In­di­an sol­diers re­spond­ed, trig­ger­ing fierce ex­changes un­til ear­ly dawn.

Two peo­ple were killed and four oth­ers in­jured in Uri and Poonch sec­tors, po­lice said, tak­ing the civil­ian death toll in In­di­an-con­trolled Kash­mir to 18 since Wednes­day. Pak­istan said In­di­an mor­tar and ar­tillery fire has killed 17 civil­ians in Pak­istan-ad­min­is­tered Kash­mir in the same pe­ri­od.

In­di­an au­thor­i­ties have evac­u­at­ed tens of thou­sands of civil­ians from vil­lages near the volatile fron­tier. Thou­sands of peo­ple slept in shel­ters for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive night.

Ri­vals ex­change strikes and al­le­ga­tions

Ten­sions be­tween the nu­clear-armed ri­vals have soared since an at­tack on a pop­u­lar tourist site in In­dia-con­trolled Kash­mir left 26 civil­ians dead, most­ly Hin­du In­di­an tourists, on April 22. New Del­hi has blamed Pak­istan for back­ing the at­tack, an ac­cu­sa­tion Is­lam­abad re­jects.

On Wednes­day, In­dia con­duct­ed airstrikes on sev­er­al sites in Pak­istani ter­ri­to­ry it de­scribed as mil­i­tant-re­lat­ed, killing 31 civil­ians ac­cord­ing to Pak­istani of­fi­cials. Pak­istan said it shot down five In­di­an fight­er jets.

On Thurs­day, In­dia said it thwart­ed Pak­istani drone and mis­sile at­tacks at mil­i­tary tar­gets in more than a dozen cities and towns, in­clud­ing Jam­mu city in In­di­an-con­trolled Kash­mir. Pak­istan de­nied that it car­ried out drone at­tacks. In­dia said mean­while it hit Pak­istan’s air de­fense sys­tems and radars close to the city of La­hore. The in­ci­dents could not be in­de­pen­dent­ly con­firmed.

The In­di­an army said Fri­day that Pak­istan fired about 300-400 drones overnight in vi­o­la­tion of In­di­an air­space to tar­get mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions in near­ly three dozen sites along the west­ern bor­ders. In­dia brought down a num­ber of the drones us­ing “ki­net­ic and non-ki­net­ic means,” Wing Com­man­der Vy­omi­ka Singh of the In­di­an air force told a news con­fer­ence.

In­dia or­ders X to block thou­sands of ac­counts

Mean­while, so­cial plat­form X in a state­ment on Thurs­day said the In­di­an gov­ern­ment had or­dered it to block users in the coun­try from ac­cess­ing more than 8,000 ac­counts, in­clud­ing a num­ber of “in­ter­na­tion­al news or­ga­ni­za­tions and oth­er promi­nent users.”

The so­cial plat­form did not re­lease the list of ac­counts it was block­ing in In­dia, but said the or­der “amounts to cen­sor­ship of ex­ist­ing and fu­ture con­tent, and is con­trary to the fun­da­men­tal right of free speech.” Lat­er, X briefly blocked ac­cess to the Glob­al Af­fairs Ac­count from which it had post­ed the state­ment, al­so cit­ing a le­gal de­mand from In­dia.

Cri­sis dis­rupts schools, sports and trav­el

In­dia’s biggest do­mes­tic crick­et tour­na­ment, the In­di­an Pre­mier League, which at­tracts top play­ers from around the world, was sus­pend­ed for one week. Pak­istan al­so moved its own do­mes­tic tour­na­ment to the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates be­cause of the ten­sions.

Pan­ic al­so spread dur­ing an evening crick­et match in north­ern Dharam­sala city, where a crowd of more than 10,000 peo­ple had to be evac­u­at­ed from the sta­di­um and the game called off, ac­cord­ing to an As­so­ci­at­ed Press pho­tog­ra­ph­er cov­er­ing the event.

Mean­while, sev­er­al north­ern and west­ern In­di­an states, in­clud­ing Pun­jab, Ra­jasthan, In­di­an-con­trolled Kash­mir, shut schools and oth­er ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions for two days.

Air­lines in In­dia have al­so sus­pend­ed flight op­er­a­tions from two dozen air­ports across north­ern and west­ern re­gions. In­dia’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­istry late Thurs­day con­firmed in a state­ment the tem­po­rary clo­sure of 24 air­ports.

The im­pact of bor­der flare up was al­so seen in the In­di­an stock mar­kets. In ear­ly trade on Fri­day, the bench­mark Sen­sex tanked 662 points to 79,649 while Nifty 50 de­clined 215 points to trade at 24,058.

Vance says a war would be ‘none of our busi­ness’

As fears of mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion soar and wor­ried world lead­ers call for de-es­ca­la­tion, the U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance has said that a po­ten­tial war be­tween In­dia and Pak­istan would be “none of our busi­ness.”

“What we can do is try to en­cour­age these folks to de-es­ca­late a lit­tle bit, but we’re not go­ing to get in­volved in the mid­dle of war that’s fun­da­men­tal­ly none of our busi­ness and has noth­ing to do with Amer­i­ca’s abil­i­ty to con­trol it,” Vance said in an in­ter­view with Fox News.

Saaliq and Roy re­port­ed from New Del­hi and Ahmed re­port­ed from Is­lam­abad. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Ish­faq Ahmed and Roshan Mughal in Muzaf­farabad, Pak­istan con­tributed to this re­port.

By AI­JAZ HUS­SAIN, MU­NIR AHMED, SHEIKH SAALIQ and RA­JESH ROY

SRI­NA­GAR, In­dia (AP)