"If they stop water, all of this will turn into the Thar desert, the whole country," one farmer said. "We'll die of hunger."

Following Tuesday's massacre of 26 mostly Indian tourists, hostilities have intensified between India and Pakistan over the hotly contested Kashmir region.

India and Pakistan have exchanged gunfire for a fourth night in a row in the wake of a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last week. The Indian army said it responded to “unprovoked small arms fire” from multiple Pakistan Army posts around midnight on Sunday along the 740km (460-mile) de-facto border separating the Indian and Pakistani areas of the disputed region,