India directs ports, terminals and shipyards to increase security as hostilities rise with Pakistan

India and Pakistan accused each other of launching new military attacks on Friday, using drones and artillery for the third day in the worst fighting between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours in nearly three decades.

The old enemies have been clashing since India struck multiple locations in Pakistan on Wednesday that it said were "terrorist camps", in retaliation for a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month.

Pakistan denied it was involved in the attack but both countries have exchanged cross-border fire and shelling and sent drones and missiles into each other's airspace since then, with about 50 people dying in the violence.

The fighting is the deadliest since a limited conflict between the two countries in Kashmir's Kargil region in 1999. India has targeted cities in Pakistan's mainland provinces outside Pakistani Kashmir for the first since their full-scale war in 1971.

India's Directorate General of Shipping directed all ports, terminals and shipyards to increase security, amid, "growing concerns regarding potential threats."

World powers from the US to China have urged the two countries to calm tensions, and US Vice President JD Vance on Thursday reiterated the call for de-escalation.

"We want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible. We can't control these countries, though," he said in an interview on Fox News show "The Story with Martha MacCallum."

The Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs Adel Al-Jubeir is also scheduled to visit Pakistan on Friday, a senior Pakistani official said.

Al-Jubeir was in India on Thursday and met Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who said he, "shared India’s perspectives on firmly countering terrorism," with him.

Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told parliament that Islamabad is "speaking daily" to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China about de-escalating the crisis.

The relationship between Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan has been fraught with tension since they became separate countries after attaining independence from colonial British rule in 1947.

Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region, has been at the heart of the hostility and they have fought two of their three wars over the region.

(Reporting by Aftab Ahmed in Jammu, Charlotte Greenfield in Islamabad, Saurabh Sharma in Amritsar, Rupam Jain in New Delhi, Ariba Shahid in Karachi, Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar,; Additional reporting by Nilutpal Timsina in Bengaluru; Writing by Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, YP Rajesh and Raju Gopalakrishnan)