Indian authorities were setting up relief camps and stockpiling food Friday as they braced for a "severe cyclone" due to slam into the country's east coast this weekend.

Cyclone Hudhud, building over the Bay of Bengal, was set to make landfall at Visakhapatnam on Andhra Pradesh state coast by midday Sunday, the Indian Meteorological Department said.

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly Friday to 17-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, who survived being shot in the head by the Taliban, and to India's Kailash Satyarthi for their championing of children's rights.

Malala, the youngest Nobel laureate, heard the news while in class at her school in Birmingham, England, where she moved from Pakistan to receive life-saving treatment two years ago.

Fighting in the disputed Kashmir region eased on Friday after days of cross-border strikes by Indian and Pakistani forces left at least 17 civilians dead and forced thousands more from their homes.

The lull in fighting followed some of the worst violence in a decade in the region, which is divided between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

India told Pakistan on Thursday to stop shelling disputed Kashmir, warning it will make such attacks "unaffordable" for Islamabad as the death toll from this week's cross-border violence rose to 17.

Defense Minister Arun Jaitley accused Pakistan of instigating the tit-for-tat shelling that began on Sunday, forcing tens of thousands on both sides of the border to flee the worst violence there in years.

A paramilitary officer charged with guarding a nuclear plant shot and killed three of his colleagues on Wednesday in a shooting spree at their base in southern India, authorities said.

It was not immediately clear what provoked the attack, which took place early Wednesday morning at a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) base in southern Tamil Nadu state, around 10 kilometers (six miles) away from the Kalpakkam power plant.

Hundreds of villagers have fled their homes in the remote Kashmir region as Indian and Pakistani forces kept up Tuesday their cross-border firing that has left nine people dead so far, officials said.

Firing across the border in recent days has stoked tensions and left nine people dead on Monday alone, the highest civilian toll in a single day in more than a decade in the troubled region.

Indian and Pakistan security forces traded fire along their troubled frontier, leaving five civilians dead in Indian Kashmir and four in Pakistan, marring the Muslim festival of Eid, officials on the two sides said Monday.

The two countries accused each other of provoking the firing which stoked fresh tensions between the nuclear-armed nations that have fought three wars, two over scenic Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Pakistan on Saturday barred activists from taking relief goods intended for flood victims to the border of Indian-controlled Kashmir, where delays in aid have created widespread anger among residents.

The frustration has spread to the Pakistani-controlled area of the territory because of the family ties across the de facto border, where movement even for close relatives is tightly restricted.

A suspected grenade found on an Air India plane turned out to be a dummy object placed on the jet during a security drill, the Press Trust of India reported Saturday.

The drill conducted on a Boeing Air India 747 aircraft was part of a series by the National Security Guards to check alertness of crew members, the national news agency said, quoting unnamed government officials.

A stampede at a popular Hindu festival in eastern India to celebrate the victory of good over evil left 32 people dead on Friday, an official said.

Thousands of people were starting to leave the grounds after celebrating the Dussehra festival in the city of Patna when panic erupted, possibly caused by rumors of an electrical fire.