Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to reports that India had conducted missile strikes on Pakistan, weeks after a terrorist attack was carried out in Kashmir.
Rubio explained he is “monitoring the situation” between the two countries closely and expressed hope that the situation “ends quickly.”
“I am monitoring the situation between India and Pakistan closely,” Rubio wrote in a wrote in a post on X. “I echo @POTUS’s comments earlier today that this hopefully ends quickly and will continue to engage both Indian and Pakistani leadership towards a peaceful resolution.”
Rubio’s comments come as India’s government confirmed that early Wednesday, it had “struck nine sites in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region,” the New York Times reported:
The Indian government said its forces had struck nine sites in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistani military officials said that five places had been hit, in Punjab Province and its part of Kashmir.
The Indian government explained that it “struck Pakistan after gathering evidence” showing “Pakistan-based terrorists” were involved in the terrorist attack on Kashmir, according to the outlet:
India said it had struck Pakistan after gathering evidence “pointing towards the clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists” in last month’s attack on civilians in a tourist area in Kashmir. It said that its military actions on Wednesday had been “measured, responsible and designed to be nonescalatory in nature.” It added that it had targeted only “known terror camps.”
As a result of the attack, eight people were killed and 38 others were left injured, Pakistan’s military spokesperson said, according to the Associated Press (AP).
“Pakistan has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India and a strong response is indeed being given,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a statement, according to the outlet.
Breitbart News’s John Hayward reported on Monday, India’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) ordered “several states, including the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region” and other regions close to the Pakistani border to “conduct civilian defense drills.”
The order from the MHA came as each country had “imposed a raft of sanctions and penalties on the other” in the aftermath of the April 22 terrorist attack, which “targeted a tourist site in the Himalayas called Phalagram” and left roughly 26 people dead.
Breitbart News reported:
The attack targeted a tourist site in the Himalayas called Phalagram, also known as “Little Switzerland” because it has remained largely tranquil during 35 years of unrest in the region. The Jammu and Kashmir region is a territory administered by India that borders Pakistan. It has the highest proportion of Muslim residents of any territory in India. It was a partially autonomous state until 2019, when the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked its autonomy and brought it fully under the Indian constitution.
In response to the news of situation between India and Pakistan, President Donald Trump called it a “shame,” and expressed hope that “it ends quickly.”
“It’s a shame,” Trump said. “We just heard about it — just as we were walking in the doors of the Oval. I just heard about it, I guess people knew something was going to happen based on a little bit of the past. They’ve been fighting for a long time … for many, many decades — centuries, actually. I hope it ends quickly.”
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