Eight people were killed in Kashmir following clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops on the troubled border between the two countries, officials said on Saturday.

Military posts and villages were targeted by both sides in disputed Kashmir, killing at least six civilians and two Pakistani troops, officials said Saturday, as news clashes erupted on Friday night.

Two Pakistani soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with Indian forces near the Line of Control that separates the two sides in Kashmir.

Indian police said two siblings and their mother were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir after a shell fired from Pakistani troops hit their home in the Poonch region near the Line of Control. The children's father was critically wounded.

In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, government official Umar Azam said Indian troops with heavy weapons "indiscriminately targeted border villagers" along the Line of Control, killing a boy and wounding three other people. He said several homes were destroyed by Indian shelling.

It marked the first fatalities for Pakistani troops since Wednesday. Clashes between the two sides were ramped up following a deadly militant attack on Indian troops last month.

India responded with rare air strikes in Pakistan on Tuesday, with fears that war might break out between the two nuclear powers. 

After a lull in fighting on Friday, shelling and shooting resumed the following day.

Two civilians were killed and two others wounded in the new clashes, a Pakistani military statement said.

The Indian army accused Pakistani troops of attacking Indian military posts.

However, Pakistani ministers said a key train service between Pakistan and neighbouring India would resume on Monday, in a sign relations were improving.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their independence from British rule in 1947.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday that Russia had offered to mediate an end to the crisis.