Dhubri & Dhaka, April 18 :    Dhubri & Dhaka, April 18:  A dawn-to-dusk battle shattered the peace on India's eventless eastern border with 16 jawans of the Border Security Force being killed in a fierce clash with Bangladeshi troops. Two members of the Bangladesh Rifles were also killed in the battle as the two sides blamed each other for the flare-up on the sensitive trijunction of the Meghalaya-Assam-Bangladesh borders. Bangladesh said its border guards repulsed an attack by the BSF on its northern Rowmari border. But at Mancachar on the Indian side, local MLA K.C. Boro said: 'The Bangladeshis started shelling the area from 4 am and the fighting was continuing till 7.30 in the evening.' Not very far from the Bengal-Bangladesh border, the battlefield lies east of Pyrdiwah village in Meghalaya where 19 BSF jawans are locked in a standoff with Bangladeshi troops for the third day today. BDR forces took possession of the village on Sunday night. Reports about casualties were conflicting with the Indians saying two BSF jawans were injured while Dhaka disclosed that three soldiers had been flown to the Bangladesh capital. The bodies of the dead Indian jawans are in the BDR's possession. 'We have repulsed a military assault launched by the Indians early Wednesday,' Maj. Gen. Fazlur Rahman, director-general of BDR, said. Calling it an incursion by India, Rahman said about 300 BSF jawans launched the attack to capture the Baroibari border observation post at Rowmari, about 40 kilometres from the frontier district town of Kurigram. The BDR retaliated with machine-gun fire as the BSF used heavy artillery and mortar during the attack. Bangladesh officials see the attack as a backlash to the BDR's retaking of Padua (Pyrdiwah in Meghalaya) village. Bangladesh claimed that the Indians had been in illegal control of the village since Bangladesh's 1971 independence war against Pakistan. On the Indian side, the inspector-general of the BSF, V.K. Gaur, said he failed to fathom why Bangladesh had made such an unprovoked attack in the sector. 'There is no dispute as Mancachar is a well-demarcated area. The only possible reason for this sort of aggression could be diversionary tactic so that our concentration is diverted from Pyrdiwah.' 'We are baffled by the action of Bangladesh Rifles,'' an Indian diplomat in Dhaka said. The Indian high commissioner in Dhaka, Manilal Tripathi, was summoned to the foreign office to be handed a strong note of protest against the 'unprovoked attack''. The ritual was repeated in Delhi. Thousands of villagers fled in panic as the battle raged. The first of the shells fell in Shahpur in Assam, BSF sources said. Local reports said civilians from three Meghalaya villages - Kakupara, Thakurainbari and Mancachar - fled their homes to take shelter in neighbouring areas. Local people said they heard the boom of guns first at 2 am, which they believed to be shelling from across the border. Heavy exchange of fire followed during which the BSF took the fight to the BDR camp in Boroibari village, but could not hold on to it.