ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Saturday (May 10) the military had given “a befitting response” to India after the worst confrontations in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
“Today, we have given India a befitting response and avenged the blood of innocent lives,” he said in a statement issued by his office, after speaking with all political parties.
Pakistan said it had launched counterattacks against India on Saturday, using medium-range Fateh missiles to target an Indian missile storage facility and air bases in Pathankot and Udhampur. The strikes came after Islamabad said India had fired missiles at three airbases in the country.
Indian wing commander Vyomika Singh told a briefing on Saturday there were “several high-speed missile attacks” on air bases, but “limited damage” to equipment.
Pakistan earlier accused India of targeting three of its bases with missiles, including one in Rawalpindi, some 10km from the capital, Islamabad.
At least 13 civilians were killed in Pakistani Kashmir in 12 hours until noon on Saturday, the region’s disaster authority said, as India and Pakistan traded fire after Islamabad’s military action against India in the early hours of the day.
More than 50 people were also injured in the region, the authority said.
The government has named its new retaliatory operation against India “Bunyan-un-Marsoos”. Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said the name means “a wall fortified with lead”.
Pakistan’s defence minister added on Saturday that no meeting of the top military and civil body overseeing the country’s nuclear arsenal had been scheduled following its earlier military operation against India.
“This thing that you have spoken about (nuclear option) is present, but let’s not talk about it – we should treat it as a very distant possibility, we shouldn’t even discuss it in the immediate context,” Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told ARY TV.
“Before we get to that point, I think temperatures will come down. No meeting has happened of the National Command Authority, nor is any such meeting scheduled.”
The clashes, involving fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery, are the worst in decades and have killed more than 60 civilians.
The fighting was touched off by an attack last month in the Indian-administered side of disputed Kashmir that killed 26 tourists, mostly Hindu men, which Delhi blamed on Islamabad.
India accused the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba – a UN-designated terrorist organisation – of carrying out the attack, but Islamabad has denied any involvement and called for an independent probe.
The countries have fought several wars over the Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both claim in full but administer separate portions of since gaining independence from British rule in 1947.
