PESHAWAR: Mortar rounds fired from Afghanistan have killed four civilians in a border village in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt, security officials said Monday.

The late Sunday incident comes as a delegation of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council prepare to travel to Islamabad to meet Pakistani political and military leaders for talks on peace in their war torn country.

“Four civilians were killed in Nez Naarai village, in Shawal area of South Waziristan, when Afghan forces fired mortar shells from across the border,” a security official based in Peshawar told AFP.

A second security official said the victims were collecting wood and were hit by the mortar shells as they loaded it into a vehicle.

Two children were among the four dead, the second official told AFP.

The Pakistani foreign ministry condemned the shelling as “unhelpful and unproductive” and urged Kabul to take steps to prevent any repeat.

In recent months shelling across the porous mountain frontier, which militants can easily penetrate, has raised tensions and in early October a senior Afghan general visited Islamabad to discuss the issue.