Anti-Indian protests have continued in some places inPakistan. InMultanan effigy of India’s prime minister Narendra Modi was burned, and inChamanan Indian flag was trampled underfoot.
India’s defence minister,Rajnath Singh, has defended his nation’s recent actions in a statement, saying “We have always played the role of a responsible nation”. He did not rule out further Indian military action.
He said “We have always been in favour of resolving problems through dialogue. But this does not mean that anyone should take unfair advantage of our patience. If anyone tries to take advantage of our patience, then they will have to be fully prepared to face action just like yesterday. We are prepared for such a responsible response in the future as well.
Reuters has a quick snap to say thatPakistan’s foreign minister has told the news agency that theIndia-Pakistan hotlineis working, and there has been contact between the offices of the respective national security advisers.
More details soon …
India’s exterior minister has today been hosting Iran’s foreign minister. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar posted on social mediato sayhe had briefed Abbas Araqchi on “regional and global developments.”
Upon his arrival in India this morning, Araqchi had urged restraint betweenPakistanand India. Reuters reports Iran’s representative said “We hope that India and Pakistan will prevent the escalation of tension in the region. Our region needs peace, especially to expand economic cooperation between regional countries, and we hope this will happen.”
Araqchi visited Pakistan earlier this week, two days before India launched its missile strikes inside Pakistan and Pakistan-controlledKashmir.
Images on the news wires show the aftermath of alleged attacks on both sides of theIndia-Pakistanborder and in thelong-disputed territory ofKashmir.
India’s government has said it has been recovering debris from a number of locations after it accusedPakistanof launching an attack using drones and missiles.
“Pakistan attempted to engage a number of military targets … using drones and missiles,” India’s defence ministry said in a statement, adding that “these were neutralised” by air defence systems.
“The debris of these attacks is now being recovered from a number of locations,” it added.
The defence ministry said that on Thursday morning its military had “targeted air defence radars and systems at a number of locations in Pakistan”, saying that the “response has been in the same domain, with the same intensity, as Pakistan.”
It claimed that it had “reliably learnt that an air defence system at Lahore has been neutralised.”
India fired attack drones into Pakistan on Thursday, with one wounding four soldiers, the Pakistani military claimed, a day after missiles struck several locations and killed more than two dozen people. Several drones were shot down, officials said
Hours after the first drone attacks, India’s defence ministry said it targeted air defence systems in several locations in Pakistan, but did not say whether it used drones
India alleged that Pakistan had attempted to launch drones and missiles at a number of military targetsin its north and west, including in the major cities of Amritsar, Srinagar and Chandigarh. It said its air defence systems stopped all the attacks
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have soared since gunmen killed 26 people, mostly Indian Hindu tourists, in the India-controlled part of Kashmir last month. India accused Pakistan of being behind the assault. Islamabad denies that
Indian strikes on Wednesday killed 31 civilians, including women and children, according to Pakistani officials
Pakistan’s prime ministerShehbaz Sharifhas vowed to avenge the deaths in the strikes, raising fears that the two countries could be headed toward another all-out conflict.