Rockets Fired From Pakistan Pound Afghan Villages KABUL, Afghanistan - Villages in northeastern Afghanistan - an area thick with competing Taliban factions, operatives from Al Qaeda and other Islamist militants - were bombarded with hundreds of rockets fired from Pakistan over the weekend, leaving at least four civilians dead, Afghan officials said. The latest cross-border rocket barrage exposed increasing tensions over what Afghanistan and the United States on one side and Pakistan on the other agree is problem: the virtual free flow of militants across a barely marked frontier that often seems noted only on maps. Each side accuses the other of tolerating Islamist militants, and Afghan accusations of sporadic barrages from the Pakistani side of the frontier - most, like Sunday's statements, carefully calibrated to not directly accuse the Pakistani military of firing the rockets - have added to the mistrust between the two countries just as the United States is struggling to extract itself from the Afghan war. The Pakistanis say Afghan and American forces, which have largely pulled out of northeastern Afghanistan over the past two years, have allowed factions of the Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot of the Afghan movement that focuses on attacks against the Pakistani government, to find refuge in the region following successive Pakistan military offensives. The militants now use northeastern Afghanistan as a springboard for cross-border attacks; there have been 15 in the past year, resulting in more than 100 deaths, a Pakistani military official said Sunday. The latest came this past week when militants attacked a Pakistani village militia that is fighting the Taliban, according to Pakistani officials. For their part, Afghan and American officials have long accused Pakistan of aiding the Afghan Taliban up and down the entire border and of turning a blind eye to Qaeda militants, who have managed to carve out havens on either side of the frontier. Yet officials from all three countries have largely remained cautious about making too much of the unstable situation in northeastern Afghanistan in large part because the region's exceedingly remote and difficult terrain, with its isolated mountainside villages and easy militant hiding spots, have created stiff challenges with few easy solutions. But Afghan officials now appear to be getting more vocal about the occasional rocket barrages launched across the border, which they often suggest is the work of Pakistan's military. Afghan officials said Sunday that the region had been hit by about 400 rockets over the weekend. The Pakistani military official said his forces had not fired the rockets, and that "Pakistani troops only respond and engage militants from where they are attacked or fired upon." The Foreign Ministry, in a statement, stopped short of making an outright accusation against Pakistani forces. But it did say that Deputy Foreign Minister Jawad Ludin had summoned Pakistan's envoy in Kabul and told him continued rocket fire would have a "negative impact" on relations. The two agreed that military officials from both countries would soon meet in Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan, "to identify ways to prevent any future shelling into Afghan villages," the statement said. Afghan officials in Kunar Province, which along with neighboring Nuristan Province has faced most of the barrages, were less circumspect on Sunday - they directly blamed Pakistan's military. Wasifullah Wasifi, a spokesman for Kunar's government, said Pakistani rocket fire had picked up since the signing in May of a strategic partnership deal between Afghanistan and the United States. Many Afghans believe Pakistan opposed the deal because, they say, it seeks to dominate its smaller and weaker neighbor, though the pact has not been a major issue in Pakistan, and Pakistan insists it wants good relations with Afghanistan. The Pakistanis "claim that their outposts are attacked by militants who they say are enjoying sanctuary on our side of the border," he said in a telephone interview. But that is not true. The rocket fire, Afghan officials and villagers said, made life unbearable and killed four people in Dangam district of Kunar on Saturday and Sunday. "Some houses have been ruined, and many cows and sheep have been slaughtered as well," said Haji Khan Jan, a village elder in Dangam. We cannot leave our homes. In western Afghanistan on Sunday, an Afghan official said a policeman opened fire on forces from the NATO-led coalition. It happened around 7:30 p.m., after the Afghan police had broken their daily fasts for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. Col. Noor Khan Nekzad, a spokesman for the police in Herat, said the shooting took place at a coalition police training center near the city. The situation was still uncertain, and he could not say how many, if any, coalition service members were killed. The coalition offered no immediate comment. The training center is mainly staffed by Italian forces, although some Americans also work there. Elsewhere in eastern Afghanistan, the coalition said three of its service members were killed in two separate attacks over the weekend. The first death came in an insurgent attack on Saturday, and the other two were killed by a roadside bomb on Sunday, it said. The coalition, as its practice, said little else about the deaths, and did not specify where they took place or the nationalities of those killed. Declan Walsh contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.