It was a balmy night when mortar struck the courtyard of Shahdin Mohammad's home, killing his son and grandson and injuring three other family members who were asleep outside.

He knelt on the ground, cradling his 12-year-old grandson, shouting for help, but by the time a neighbour arrived and drove them to the nearest clinic, it was too late.

“The firing started at 2 am and we had nowhere to go. We were outside our home and a shell landed right in front of us,” said Mohammad, a 65-year-old Indian farmer from Jeora Farm village. “That was the end of the world for me.”

Located about one kilometre (0.62 mile) from India's border with Pakistan, Jeora Farm is one of scores of villages in the disputed Kashmir region being hit by increasing exchange of fire between the two nations.

During an 11 year lull in fighting along this stretch of the border after a 2003 ceasefire, villages grew on both sides, with brick buildings replacing mud huts and schools and wedding halls opening close to check-points but that peace is now shattered.

In August when Mohammad's family was killed, the firing went on for 45 days, affecting rice production and schooling for many children. This month has seen a renewed bout of fighting.

The firing, usually restricted to military posts, has killed 23 civilians this year, the highest death toll in over a decade, and prompted accusations of the deliberate targeting of civilians.

This month nine Pakistanis and eight Indians were killed in the latest spat between the South Asian nuclear-armed neighbours.

Amid the fighting some 20,000 Indians have fled to relief camps while at least 2,000 Pakistanis have sought shelter with relatives, or in open fields, out of the range of fire.

“There is good reason for concern,” said Michael Kugelman, Senior Program Associate for South and Southeast Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Institute for Scholars.

“Not only are we seeing more civilian casualties than is typically the case, but we're also seeing cases of children wounded and killed by shelling ... It's expanded into a humanitarian tragedy.”

Deliberate targets

India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the mostly-Muslim region of Kashmir with its Himalayan mountains and fertile valleys which they both claim in full but rule in part.

Although the tit-for-tat artillery fire frequently rattles the so-called Line of Control (LoC), separating Indian- and Pakistani-held Kashmir, the clashes have intensified.

Indian military officials say there have been over 110 ceasefire violations by Pakistan so far this year compared to 347 in 2013 and 114 in 2012.

Islamabad says there have been 227 violations by New Delhi this year, against 414 in 2013 and 230 the year before.

But Chief Minister of Indian-administered Kashmir has accused Pakistan of a change in tactic and targeting civilians.

“Such a large scale loss to the civilians clearly indicates they have changed their strategy from engaging in cross-firing with the forces on this side of border to specifically targeting the civilian areas,” Omar Abdullah told journalists this week.

Pakistani military officials deny the claim.

Major General Khan Tahir Javed Khan said the Pakistani army only fires mortars back and never at civilians. He claimed India has fired 19,733 mortars into his 193 km (120 mile) stretch of the disputed border so far this year, compared to 180 in 2012.

“Our main fire is concentrated onto their posts, not onto their villages,” Khan insisted.

One mortar hit Irum Shahzadi's home in the Pakistani village of Dhamala early Monday as her three sons leapt out of bed, excited about celebrating the Muslim holiday of Eid.

“I could not see anything, because of the dark (smoke), so I started groping on the floor. I found my younger son, and lifted him into my lap,” said Shahzadi, weeping uncontrollably.

“My entire world has collapsed ... My sons ... one had no face, the other was hit in the chest and in the arms.” Two of the boys died.

In the line of fire

In the lush Basmati rice-growing plains of India's R.S. Pora sector, the skirmishes temporarily displace thousands of people who move into schools turned into relief camps and this can disrupt the lives of everyone from children to farmers.

“First, it was dry weather that affected our crops. Then when it rained, the firing drove us away from the village,” said Vicky Kumar, a farmer in Abdullain village on the Indian side.

“We couldn't apply fertilisers and this led to the crop failing. We expect only 50 per cent yield this year.” Children complain of not being able to go to school, saying even when the guns fall silent, they are too scared to go out.

But the biggest challenge facing villagers in this stretch of border comes at night when the mortars fall.

In the Pakistani village of Dhamala, Wazir Bibi said she and her four daughters were always scared but couldn't leave.

“Every time I hear the blasts, if feels like my heart will burst from my body,” said Bibi, 65. “We are women and poor, we cannot sleep in the fields, we have nowhere to go.”

Hell's village

However some villagers living along border said they had benefited from the 2003 ceasefire agreement.

In the Indian town of Arnia, people farm their land right up to the international border and have turned their mud houses into two-storey structures with satellite dishes and bathrooms.

Residents proudly point to a wedding hall as a sign of normality, saying previously few marriages occurred here as families refused to marry their daughters to young men living in a place once nicknamed “Hell's village”.

Shops sell cement and floor tiles to feed a construction boom and a 30 km stretch of road from Jammu town to the border crossing of Suchetgarh is being widened to four lanes.

The plan was to eventually open the area for trade between the two nations, but that seems a distant reality now.

Islamabad and New Delhi blame one another for initiating the border shelling, both saying that they will not back down first.

Pakistan on Thursday said it was capable of responding “befittingly” to India, while India said Pakistan would pay an “unaffordable price” if it persisted with the shelling.

The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday expressed concern over deaths and displacement of civilians, while human rights groups have warned of the violatation of international humanitarian laws if claims of targeting civilians are true.

“They should investigate any allegations of violations including the indiscriminate use of weapons such as heavy artillery in densely populated areas, using civilians as human shields, or otherwise placing them at unnecessary risk,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch.