Pakistan captures two pilots after Indian warplanes shot down
Tensions between the two nuclear-armed rivals have risen in the past few weeks.
Pakistan’s air force said it has shot down two Indian warplanes after they crossed the boundary between the two nuclear-armed rivals in the disputed territory of Kashmir, with two Indian pilots being captured.
The civil aviation authority in Pakistan later shut all airspace in the country to commercial flights.
The dramatic escalation came hours after Pakistan said mortar shells fired by Indian troops from across the frontier dividing the two sectors of Kashmir killed six civilians and wounded several others.
The injured pilot is being treated at a military hospital. Maj Gen Ghafoor said the pilots are being treated well, but made no mention of them being returned to India.
He struck a conciliatory tone, saying: “We have no intention of escalation, but are fully prepared to do so if forced into that paradigm.”
Indian air force spokesman Anupam Banerjee in New Delhi said he had no information on Pakistan’s statement.
Another police officer, SP Pani, said firefighters were at the site in Budgam area in Indian-controlled Kashmir where the Indian warplane crashed. Eyewitnesses said soldiers fired into the air to keep residents away from the crash site.
Indian news reports said airports in the Indian portion of Kashmir closed for civilian traffic shortly after the air force jet crashed. The Press Trust of India news agency said these airports are located at Srinagar, Jammu and Leh. Indian authorities declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the foreign ministry in Islamabad said the country’s air force was carrying out air strikes from within Pakistani airspace across the disputed Kashmir boundary, but that this was not in “retaliation to continued Indian belligerence”.
Maj Gen Ghafoor said the strikes were aimed at “avoiding human loss and collateral damage”.
According to local Pakistani police official Mohammad Altaf, the six fatalities in the Indian shelling earlier on Wednesday included children. The shells hit the village of Kotli in Pakistan’s section of Kashmir.
The disputed territory is split between Pakistan and India and claimed by both in its entirety. Though Pakistani and Indian troops in Kashmir often trade fire, the latest casualties came a day after tensions escalated sharply following a pre-dawn air strike and incursion by India that New Delhi said targeted a terrorist training camp in north-western Pakistan.
Residents on both sides of the de facto frontier, the so-called Line of Control, said there were exchanges of fire between the two sides through the night. In Pakistan’s part of Kashmir, hundreds of villagers fled border towns.
The situation was no different in villages along the Line of Control in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where residents were moving to safer places following the intense exchange of fire, which began on Tuesday and continued on Wednesday. In New Delhi, Indian officials said at least five of their soldiers were wounded in firing by Pakistani troops along the volatile frontier.
Indian army spokesman Lt Col Devender Anand said Pakistani soldiers targeted dozens of Indian military positions across the Line of Control throughout the night. An Indian military statement said that “out of anger and frustration”, Pakistan “initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation”.
Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan is expected to convene the National Command Authority to discuss Islamabad’s response to the incursions by Indian warplanes.
On Wednesday, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told state-run Pakistan Television he was in touch with his counterparts across the world about the “Indian aggression”, adding that New Delhi had endangered peace in the region by Tuesday’s air strike on Pakistan.
She said the limited objective of India’s pre-emptive strike inside Pakistan on a terrorist training camp was to act decisively against the terrorist infrastructure of the Jaish-e-Mohammad group.
The latest wave of tensions between Pakistan and India first erupted after Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing of a convoy of India’s paramilitary forces in the Indian portion of Kashmir which killed 40 Indian troops on February 14.
Pakistan said it was not involved in the attack and was ready to help New Delhi in its investigations.
