By The Washington Post

Published: Tuesday, January 8, 2013, 10:12 p.m.
Updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

NEW DELHI — Indian military officials on Tuesday accused Pakistani troops of killing two of their soldiers and mutilating the body of at least one of them after crossing into Indian territory in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, a development that could impede a tenuous peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals.

The charge came two days after Pakistan accused India of killing one of its soldiers along the Line of Control, the de facto border where a fragile cease-fire has held for almost a decade.

Indian Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Rajesh Kalia said in a statement that the alleged incident was “a significant escalation” of cease-fire violations by Pakistan and would be addressed “sternly” through official channels.

A senior Indian army official said that the body of one soldier killed in a firefight after the incursion had been badly mutilated and that the condition of the other remained unconfirmed. Some reports, citing military officials, said the head was missing from at least one of the bodies.

“This is not something of a very slight nature that you can bypass or ignore easily,” Foreign Minister Salman Khursheed told the Indian news channel NDTV 24X7. “It causes a tremendous amount of hurt to us. This is not the way that civilized people deal with each other, even if they have serious differences.”

A Pakistani army spokesman denied that Pakistani soldiers had been involved in an unprovoked shooting, the Associated Press reported, adding that the Pakistani military had said in a statement that the Indian accusation “looks like Indian propaganda” to divert attention after the Sunday incident.

The border in Kashmir - a mountainous region that has been the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan — has been relatively calm in the past year, despite a handful of minor cease-fire violations, officials said.

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