(Updates with Indian comment, background)
By Katharine Houreld
ISLAMABAD, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The Pakistani military said on Wednesday one of its officers had been killed by Indian troops firing across the disputed Kashmir border in a region where fighting broke out this week for the first time in more than a decade.
"Another soldier ... was seriously wounded due to unprovoked Indian shelling," said a Pakistani military official.
The incident follows the Aug. 6 killing of five Indian soldiers along the so-called Line of Control that separates the two sides in the Himalayan region. India said the five were killed by Pakistani forces but Pakistan denied involvement.
The nuclear-armed rivals have fought three wars since 1947, two of them over Kashmir. Both control a part of the Muslim-majority region but claim it in full.
A truce along their Kashmir border has held for nearly a decade even though it has been broken every now and then by tit-for-tat artillery fire and the occasional cross-border ambush.
Commenting on the latest incident, an Indian army official said Indian troops came under heavy mortar and light-machine gun fire from the Pakistani side on Tuesday night in the Kargil region, where the two sides fought an undeclared war in 1999.
The region had been peaceful since then until shooting began again last week.
"Under intense pressure ... we fired back," the Indian official said, adding that Indian forces later overheard Pakistani communications indicating soldiers were hurt on their side.
India has faced an insurgency in its part of Kashmir since 1989 and had long accused Pakistan of supporting the militants fighting Indian rule.
Pakistan denies arming the militants, saying that it only offers moral support to the Muslim people of Kashmir who are living under what Pakistan criticises as harsh Indian rule.
Nevertheless, despite Pakistan's denials that it helps the militants, fighters have for years slipped from the Pakistani side of Kashmir into the Indian side to battle Indian forces.
India says that this year it has seen a spike in attempts by militants to cross into its part of Kashmir.
Many analysts expect the trend to continue as the two countries jostle for influence in Afghanistan as a NATO force prepares to withdraw by the end of 2014.
Both nations fear the other is trying to install a proxy government in Kabul.
Pakistan's new government has tried to be conciliatory over the latest outbreak of border violence.
On Monday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Pakistan and India should be fighting poverty and illiteracy instead of each other. He has also asked for talks with Indian officials.
But with elections approaching in India, many doubt that the government in New Delhi is in a position to make any concessions to old enemy Pakistan. (Reporting By Katharine Houreld; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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