Pakistan has alleged that India is planning a military strike on its territory, signaling a further escalation in tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
“Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends to launch a military strike within the next 24 to 36 hours, using the Pahalgam incident as a false pretext,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X on Tuesday evening.
“Any act of aggression will be met with a decisive response. India will be fully responsible for any serious consequences in the region,” Tarar added.
His statement came after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the country’s armed forces “full operational freedom” to determine the mode, targets, and timing of a response to the recent terrorist attack in India’s Jammu and Kashmir union territory, which killed 26 people, most of them tourists.
New Delhi has linked the terrorist attack to Pakistan, reiterating long-standing accusations that its neighbor supports cross-border terrorism and insurgencies. Pakistan has denied the allegations and, in turn, accused India of backing “terrorist networks” operating on Pakistani soil. The two countries have a long-standing dispute over the Kashmir region, which is de facto divided by the Line of Control established after the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War.
On April 22, terrorists opened fire on a group of people in Pahalgam, in the northern part of Jammu and Kashmir. The Resistance Front, believed to be an offshoot of the Pakistan-based jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to punish “the terrorists and their backers.” Indian media reported on Tuesday that four anti-terror operations were underway in Jammu and Kashmir.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif suggested that the Pahalgam attack was a “false flag operation.” In response, India’s Deputy Envoy to the United Nations, Yojna Patel, condemned Pakistan for making what she called “baseless allegations against India.”
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