ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday accused Afghanistan of overreacting after Kabul cancelled a military visit in protest against cross-border shelling, in the latest sign of worsening relations between the neighbours.

“We believe that Afghanistan overreacted to a small incident,” foreign ministry spokesman Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry said.

The Pakistan Army invited 11 Afghan officers to take part in a military exercise in Quetta, but the Afghan government called their visit off because of “unacceptable Pakistani artillery shelling”.

The governor of the Afghan province of Kunar, Fazlullah Wahidi, said that up to 50 rockets fired from Pakistan damaged property on Monday and Tuesday.

The Pakistani foreign ministry said its “disciplined and responsible” troops had responded to what it called “some intrusions from the Afghan side”.

The spokesman said the army visit had been designed to increase “mutual cooperation and confidence, and we believe such activities should continue in the larger interest of peace in the region”.

On Wednesday night the bodies of 15 men believed to have died fighting Nato and Afghan forces in Afghanistan’s Helmand province were handed over to clerics on the Pakistani border in the southwestern district of Chagai, officials said.—AFP