India, Pakistan trade shelling over border

NEW DELHI, India -- As India and Pakistan shot at each other and spoke of war, weeping friends and relatives on both sides bid farewell Friday before the two nations sever their land and air links for the first time in 30 years.

The South Asian rivals -- both of which have nuclear weapons -- have been threatening a new war since a Dec. 13 attack by gunmen on India's Parliament. New Delhi says Pakistan sponsored the attack and demands it arrest and extradite the leaders of two militant groups India says conducted the operation. Pakistan denies the charge.

The Indian army ordered evacuations of 20,000 people from more than 40 border villages in the Indian-held part of Kashmir, and traded shells overnight with Pakistani border forces, officials said Friday. Soldiers also laid mines outside the villages.

Retaliatory firing by Pakistani troops killed a 3-year-old in an Indian border village, police said. The firing ended two days of relative calm.

The two nations on Thursday ordered each other's 110-person embassy staffs cut in half and banned overflights as of next Tuesday. On that day, India will also close bus and train links, and private cars will also be barred from crossing the border -- closing transport links for the first time since the 1971 war.

Train pulled out

The halt to transportation links is a haunting reminder of past wars and a psychological blow for millions on both sides connected by blood or friendship.

Men and women wept, desperately embraced relatives and tried to hold hands through the iron window grills of the cars as the Samjhauta Express, the only train between the two nations, pulled out of the Old Delhi station, carrying people home before the deadline.

At the Lahore station in Pakistan, an Indian woman, Amina Begum, stood tightly holding the hand of her brother Tanveer Ahmad, a Pakistani. Both wept.

Separated in their childhood, they had met after 53 years. "I had come here to stay for two months, but now I'm going back just after seven days," Begum said as she boarded the train.

A spokesman for Pakistan's military-government said India's troop buildup at the border was making a confrontation inevitable. "The Indian government is putting itself into a corner where it would be difficult for them to now back off," Gen. Rashid Quereshi said in Islamabad.

Speaking at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Bush said Secretary of State Colin Powell had spoken to both sides, urging restraint. He praised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying he had arrested 50 "extreme terrorists."