NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, 19 May — India expelled Pakistan’s ambassador yesterday as cross-border shelling between the nuclear-armed neighbors escalated in the disputed Kashmir region.

The decision to expel Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the high commisioner of Pakistan in New Delhi, was taken at a meeting of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Security Committee, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh told reporters.

The diplomat said he had been given a week to leave India and warned his expulsion could heighten friction between the two countries. “My expulsion will not help to alleviate the situation and we hope this step will not be followed by more negative steps which will further exacerbate the situation,” Qazi said, adding he would soon leave for Islamabad.

The Security Committee met to decide India’s response to a militant attack in Kashmir that killed 34 people on Tuesday. India blamed Pakistan for the suicide attack on an army base in which most of those killed were the wives and children of Indian soldiers.

Jaswant Singh said as New Delhi no longer had an ambassador in Islamabad, the Pakistani ambassador would have to leave. “For the sake of parity of representation between the two countries, the high commissioner of Pakistan, (who) is currently in India, (will) be required to return to Islamabad,” he told reporters. India withdrew its own ambassador from Pakistan following an attack on its Parliament on Dec. 15 by Kashmiri separatists.

Pakistan responded indignantly, saying India’s decision to expel its envoy would only increase tensions. “Efforts should be made to reduce tension, and Pakistan, despite this action of India, which has disappointed us, will continue to strive to resolve all issues with India through peaceful negotiations and through peaceful means,” said Aziz Ahmad Khan, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman.

The scaling down of ties was expected to be followed by other diplomatic initiatives, said Amitabh Mattoo, a member of India’s National Security Advisory Board. “Pakistan has to clamp down on terrorists sponsoring violence in Kashmir before the situation can change. Until that happens, India will continue to exert both diplomatic and military pressure,” he said.

Meanwhile, thousands of people were fleeing their homes as Indian and Pakistani troops used heavy weaponry to target each other. Fighting on the border, which began two days ago, intensified yesterday. In Indian villages along the frontier, the carcasses of animals lay in the summer heat in abandoned villages, their stench mixing with the smell of spent ammunition.

“It’s war,” said Bishamber Dass, one of 10,000 people who fled their homes Friday night and was sheltering in a makeshift camp. “The boom of the guns could be heard even at a distance of five kilometers (three miles) from the border.”

The Pakistan Army said two people were killed and 15 injured as the Indian Army unleashed “indiscriminate” firing and shelling across the Line of Control (LoC) into Pakistani Kashmir. “The Pakistan Army swiftly responded and targeted the hostile Indian military positions,” it said in a statement.

Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir’s summer capital Jammu said four people were injured when the Pakistan Army shelled a frontier district, sparking panic among hundreds of villagers.

India’s Minister of State for Home Vidyasagar Rao said some 11,213 Pakistani nationals are overstaying in India and 2,300 of them are untraceable. The United News of India quoted Rao as saying in the southern city of Hyderabad that the federal government has asked the states to trace and deport them.

But all those overstaying are not dangerous and the government will sympathetically consider genuine cases, Rao said.