In a statement, Pakistan's army Friday said the shooting from the Afghan side came despite being alerted in advance that census workers would be visiting villages there as part of the national census, which was launched in March.
Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman Nafeez Zakaria said the census workers were on their side of the border when Afghan forces opened fire.
Afghanistan has for years accused Pakistan of sheltering Afghan Taliban militants, something Pakistan denies.
Gen. Abdul Raziq, the police chief in Afghanistan's Kandahar province, blamed Pakistan for initiating the gunbattle.
Afghan officials, however, said Pakistani troops fired the first shots.
Maj Gen Anjum said four or five checkposts were also destroyed when Pakistani border guards retaliated to the cross-border attack. He said that Pakistan and Afghanistan were fighting against terrorism and there was need for further united efforts to combat the menace.
Chaman border has also been closed for all kinds of traffic.
Ten Pakistani civilians were killed and more than 40 people, including women and children, were injured in the firing by Afghan forces. This is where the conflict reportedly erupted on Friday when Pakistani security forces wished to conduct its ongoing census exercise.
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However, according to Article 24 of the business and transit agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan, neither country has the right to close trade routes.
Afghanistan has never formally recognised the line as the border.
Every day, thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis cross the Durand Line - the 2,430-kilometer (1,510 miles) boundary established by the British during their colonial rule.
Afghanistan does not officially recognize the whole Durand Line as an global border with Pakistan. Instead, militants with sanctuaries on either side of the border often use one of many other unofficial crossings along the frontier.
But Sediq Siddiqi, a senior spokesman for the Kabul government, on Sunday "totally rejected" the Pakistani claim of killing 50 Afghan forces as "very false".
They said government should take immediate action to prevent any possible border closure.
With the attack happening at a time census was under way in the two border villages targeted by artillery, it appeared as if the Afghan side wanted to disrupt the exercise, the report added.
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