ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 3 (UPI) -- Diplomatic tension was mounting Sunday as Afghanistan waited for a response from Pakistan about its shelling of Afghan border regions, Dawn newspaper said.
A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the Islamabad newspaper by telephone"there has been no response on Pakistan's part" about complaints raised earlier this week about the cross-border mortar shelling. He said the shelling "has caused a lot of public anger" in Kabul, Jalalabad and other eastern cities.
The dispute heightened last week when the Afghan National Army fired shells in to Pakistan along the mountainous border region, the newspaper said.
Pakistani military officials have said they were combating Taliban and al-Qaida militants who use remote border areas as sanctuaries and acknowledged some shells could have "accidentally crossed the border," but were not intentionally fired to do so.
With this month's drawdown of U.S. forces from the NATO mission, both Afghanistan and Pakistan were anticipating militants would surge into areas once secured, the newspaper said.
