New sign of tensions between India and Pakistan, the Indian authorities announced, Wednesday, April 30, the closure of the country’s airspace to Pakistani planes, responding to the ban by Islamabad from overview of its territory to Indian devices on April 24.
Pakistan said on Wednesday anticipating an Indian military strike within less than two days, after the green light given by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to reprisals for the recent attack by Pahalgam, in cashmere under Indian control. New Delhi holds Islamabad responsible for this attack committed on April 22 and never claimed who killed 26 civilians. The Pakistani government has denied any involvement.
After series of diplomatic sanctions, broken agreements and canceled visas, the two countries born in 1947 of a bloody partition began to exchange shots. For the sixth consecutive night, their soldiers, sometimes a few tens of meters from the control line (loc), the de facto border in cashmere, opened fire. Islamabad also announced that it had shot two small Indian surveillance drones entered in its airspace in cashmere in the space of twenty-four hours.
The day before, however, the two armies had their weekly telephone interview ” routine “whose content is usually kept secret, according to Pakistani forces and an Indian military source.
If these skirmishes did not do victims or damage of importance, “Pakistan has credible information according to which India intends to launch a military strike in the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours, using the pahalgam incident as a pretext”announced on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday the Pakistani Minister of Information, Attaullah Tarar. “Any aggression will lead to a decisive response. India will be fully responsible for any serious consequence in the region ”he warned.
Rubio calls to “defuse tensions”
According to an Indian government source, the Hindu ultra-nationalist head of government in New Delhi said to the chiefs of staff of the armed forces that they “Had the freedom to decide targets, the moment and the mode of response”.
In a telephone conversation on Wednesday, with the head of the Pakistani government, Shehbaz Sharif, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, encouraged Islamabad to condemn the“Abominable” Pahalgam attack and has it “Exhorted” To cooperate in the investigation, according to Washington. Mr. Sharif, on this occasion, accused India of “Provocations” and “View climbing”said his office.
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In another telephone exchange with his Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Mr. Rubio expressed his solidarity while advocating restraint. The American diplomacy chief has “Also encouraged New Delhi to work with Islamabad to defuse tensions and maintain peace and security in South Asia”.
“Pakistan will not strike the first but will not hesitate to reply with force”had previously hammered the Pakistani Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ishaq Dar.
In the Pakistani cashmere, in anticipation of the worst, the million and a half of inhabitants of the villages close to the loc make room in their makeshift bunkers. In Karachi, the economic capital of Pakistan, the scholarship has plunged, investors fearing an Indian strike.
Hunt
Attack in Pahalgam “Seems to have given Modi government the pretext he was waiting for to respond to his desire for warlike climbing”commented on Wednesday Dawn, The Pakistanis title English -speaking reference.
Already in 2019, after a deadly attack on its soldiers, India had carried out an air raid in Pakistan twelve days later and this country had retaliated. Hostilities had quickly stopped, especially thanks to American mediation.
In cashmere controlled by India, the security forces are engaged in a gigantic hunt to find the authors of the attack and their accomplices. In this mainly Muslim region, they multiply arrests and interrogation – 2,000 people were arrested – and destroyed nine houses related to the suspects of the attack and their accomplices.
Indian police broadcast the robot portrait of three of them, including two Pakistanis. She accuses them of being part of a group close to the Let, the jihadist movement Lashkar-E-Tayyaba based in Pakistan, already suspected of attacks which had killed 166 dead in Bombay in 2008.