MUZAFFARABAD, Feb 2: More than 37,000 people of Azad Jammu and Kashmir have left their homes for safer areas due to the increasing tension between India and Pakistan since December, district officials said on Saturday.

“They were living close to the Line of Control, most of them even in range of machinegun fire and under constant threat of Indian firing”, said an official.

He said most of the exodus had taken place in the southern districts, which had seen heavy exchanges of fire between Indian and Pakistani forces.

The officials said the displaced people were mainly women, children and elderly people, who had come from more than 60 villages.

The region’s governor told Reuters on Jan 12 that more than 28,000 had been forced out by the fighting.

Tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals have been high since the Dec 13 attack on the Indian parliament, which New Delhi blames on the militant groups linked to Kashmir.

Indian and Pakistani forces are squared off in disputed Kashmir along the Line of Control and their border to the south in their biggest military stand-off since 1971.

Pakistani officials say at least 40 civilians have been killed and 65 wounded in AJK villages and towns along the LoC as a result of the Indian firing since Dec 13. The Muzaffarabad police said Indian troops had fired on several villages along the ceasefire line on Saturday.

They said the firing had started in the morning and continued intermittently. No casualties were reported.