Pakistan shelling kills at least 5 Afghan villagers: officials

The incident occurred in the Sarkano district of Kunar province bordering Pakistan, an area that has seen previous cross-frontier shellings.

Kunar governor spokesman Abdul Ghani Mosamim said Pakistani security forces were erecting a fence along the so-called Durand Line when they opened fire on an Afghan security check post in Sarkano.

"When Afghan forces returned fire, they (Pakistani forces) started using heavy artillery to shell the villages in Sarkano district," Mosamim said.

"Five villagers have been killed in these shellings and 10 more wounded," he told AFP.

Kunar provincial police spokesman Farid Dehqan confirmed the incident but said six civilians had been killed and eight others wounded in the shelling.

He said some shells also landed in Asadabad, the provincial capital of Kunar.

There was no immediate comment from Pakistani security officials.

But local government official Habib Ullah Wazir said unknown attackers had fired a mortar on Tuesday from Kunar which wounded a woman and destroyed her house in Bajour district of Pakistan.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are divided by the Durand Line, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) frontier with villages straddling the border and mosques and houses having one door in Pakistan and another in Afghanistan.

Cross-border shellings have been regularly reported, often causing civilian casualties on both sides.

Pakistani media have previously reported about the country's security forces shelling suspected hideouts of extremist militant groups, including Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in Kunar province.

In February, officials in Pakistan said seven members of a Pakistani family in Bajour were killed when a mortar shell fired from Kunar province struck their home.

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