Modi says India has only paused military action and will strike if any further terror attack occurs
Modi says India has only paused military action and will strike if any further terror attack occurs
NEW DELHI (AP) — India has only “paused” its military action and will “retaliate on its own terms” if there is any future terror attack on the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Monday in his first public comments since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire over the weekend.
“We will be monitoring every step of Pakistan,” Modi said in an address to the nation. He added that India won’t “tolerate nuclear blackmailing” by Pakistan and that “this is not an era of war, but this is not an era of terrorism, either.”
The escalating hostilities between the two nuclear-armed rivals after a deadly attack on tourists in Kashmir had threatened regional peace. India accused Pakistan of backing the militants who carried out the massacre, a charge Islamabad denied.
Modi spoke after Indian and Pakistani authorities said there was no firing reported overnight along the heavily militarized region between their countries — the first time in recent days the two nations were not shooting at each other.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding to stop all military actions on land, in the air and at the sea Saturday.
“The night remained largely peaceful across Jammu and Kashmir, and other areas along the international border,” the Indian army said in a statement, adding that no incidents had been reported.
Senior military officials from India and Pakistan spoke via a hotline on Monday, the state-run Pakistan Television reported. It gave no details, but the two sides were to assess if the ceasefire was holding and how to ensure its implementation.
Local government officials in Pakistan-administered Kashmir reported no incidents of cross-border firing along the Line of Control — the de facto border that divides the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan — and said civilians displaced by recent skirmishes between Pakistani and Indian forces were returning to their homes.
Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, said late Sunday that Pakistan remains committed to upholding the ceasefire and will not be the first to violate it.
Soon after the ceasefire announcement, Pakistan reopened all of its airports and restored flight operations. India followed up Monday by reopening of all the 32 airports that were shut temporarily across its northern and western regions.
The militaries of the two countries have been engaged in one of their most serious confrontations in decades since Wednesday, when India struck targets inside Pakistan it said were affiliated with militants responsible for the massacre of 26 tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The tourists, mostly Indian Hindu men, were killed in front of their families in the meadow town of Pahalgam last month.
The incident first led to tit-for-tat diplomatic measures, sending their bilateral ties to a near historic low. The two expelled each other’s diplomats, shut their airspace and land borders and suspended a crucial water treaty.
After Wednesday’s strikes in Pakistan, both sides exchanged heavy fires along their de facto border in Kashmir followed by missile and drone strikes into each other’s territories, mainly targeting military installations and airbases. Dozens of civilians were killed on both the sides in heavy shelling, the two countries said.
The Indian military on Sunday for the first time claimed its strikes into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and Pakistan last week killed more than 100 militants, including prominent leaders.
Lt. Gen. Rajiv Ghai, the director general of India’s military operations, said India’s armed forces struck nine militant infrastructure and training facilities, including sites of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group that India blames for carrying out major militant strikes in India and the disputed region of Kashmir.
Ghai said at least 35 to 40 Pakistani soldiers were killed in clashes along the Line of Control. Five Indian soldiers were also killed, he said.
Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar on Thursday said his country’s armed forces had killed 40 to 50 Indian soldiers along the Line of Control. Pakistani military also claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets and inflected heavy losses on Indian military installations by targeting 26 locations in India.
The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the claims made by India and Pakistan.
Air Chief Marshal AK Bharti, the director general India’s air operations, told a news conference on Monday that despite “minor damage (s) incurred, all our military bases and air defense systems continue to remain fully operational, and ready to undertake any further missions, should the need so arise.”
Bharti reiterated that New Delhi’s fight was “with terrorists, and not with Pakistan military or its civilians.”
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Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
By RAJESH ROY
Associated Press
