ISLAMABAD/SRINAGAR: Fighting in Kashmir between India and Pakistan subsided on Friday as Pakistan’s prime minister met with advisers and military chiefs to discuss the latest spasm of violence in the disputed Himalayan region, which has killed at least 21 civilians over the past week.

Following the worst skirmishes between the nuclear-armed rivals in more than a decade, Pakistan said war with India was not an option and that both sides should work to try and defuse the conflict.

The National Security Committee “stressed the fact that both countries are aware of each other’s capabilities. War is not an option,” Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office said in a statement after chairing a committee meeting.

“It is shared responsibility of the leadership of both countries to immediately defuse the situation,” it said.

Relative calm returned to the region on Friday after a heated exchange of rhetoric, with New Delhi warning Pakistan it would pay an “unaffordable price” if shelling continued. Islamabad had said it was capable of responding “fittingly.”

“The committee expressed the resolve that any attempt to challenge Pakistan’s territorial integrity and sovereignty will be responded with full force. The Armed Forces assured the National Security Committee that they are fully prepared to deal with any adversity at our borders.”

Pakistani Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan invited the UN to investigate latest round of violence.

“In the next few days Pakistan will take a UN observer group to the border areas so they can ascertain who started this and who is responsible,” he told a news conference.

Almost 20,000 Indian civilians have fled their homes in the lowlands around India’s Jammu region to escape the fighting, taking refuge in schools and relief camps.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi “has directed that people who have been displaced from the border villages of Jammu and Kashmir due to dastardly acts of shelling by Pakistan over the last few days, be suitably compensated,” the government said in a statement.

Civilians living in the area hit hardest by the shelling expressed relief at the halt in firing.

Exchanges of sporadic fire are common along the de facto border dividing the region, despite a ceasefire pact signed in 2003. But the extent and intensity of the latest violence and the number of civilian deaths is unusual.

The latest flare-up has been the most serious violation of a 2003 cease-fire accord between India and Pakistan.

Pakistan and India have a history of tense relations and fought two of the three major wars over the mountainous Himalayan region.

While the Line of Control is guarded by both the Pakistani and Indian armies, each country uses a separate paramilitary border force to guard the lower-altitude frontier, defined by coils of razor wire that snake across foothills marked by ancient villages, tangled bushes and fields of rice and corn.

Clashes first erupted on Sunday as Muslims in the region were preparing to celebrate the key Islamic holiday of Eid Al-Adha.

Over the following days, mortar-and-gunfire exchanges killed 13 Pakistani and eight Indian villagers. Scores were also wounded and tens of thousands were displaced, fleeing their homes to seek shelter with relatives in nearby villages.

Before the lull, an Indian security official said Pakistani troops used small arms and mortar shells late Thursday to target the Hiranagar sector in Indian-held Kashmir region of Jammu.

The official said the intensity of the shelling was less, compared to previous days.