Ashraf Abo arafe
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said that his country should “sit down and talk” to resolve the crisis with India which broke out on Wednesday after Pakistani air forces downed two Indian warplanes and captured two pilots.
The Pakistani military earlier announced that two Indian pilots have been captured. The downing of the Indian jets came a day after Indian warplanes struck a military training camp in Pakistani-controlled parts of Kashmir.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that his country should “sit down and talk” to resolve the crisis with India which broke out on Wednesday after the Pakistani Air Force downed two Indian warplanes and captured two pilots.
“We didn’t take action earlier without assessing our own damage from Indian airstrikes because we wanted a justified response. Two Indian MiGs that entered Pakistani airspace today after our retaliation were shot down,” Khan said in a televised address on Wednesday.
“My question to the Indian government is: taking into account what kind of weapons you and we have, can we afford miscalculations? Where will this tension lead?” he asked.
“It will get out of control — mine or Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s. I once again invite you to sit down to the negotiating table. Let me reiterate that common sense should prevail. We must solve our problems through dialogue.”
Earlier in the day, the Pakistani Army said it had downed two Indian jets that crossed the Line of Control over the disputed Kashmir Region and entered Pakistan’s airspace.
This contradicts the account of India’s Foreign Ministry, which maintained that India lost one MiG-21 aircraft in the aerial incident and that a Pakistani jet was also shot down.
It comes a day after the Indian Air Force conducted an airstrike against a military training camp in Pakistan, killing “a very large number of people”. The camp, according to New Delhi, belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammad, the terror group responsible for a suicide car bomb attack on a paramilitary convoy in the Indian-controlled Kashmir on 14 February.
On the other side, the Indian government today said that an Indian pilot was “missing in action” after an Indian Air Force aircraft shot down a Pakistani jet targeting military installations. This was after Pakistan claimed in a statement that strikes across Line of Control are “from within Pakistani airspace.” The allegations reflect the escalation of hostilities a day after the Indian fighter jets went within Pakistan and destroyed a terror training camp.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting with top officials including Advisor Ajit Doval, the Defence and Foreign Secretaries and intelligence officials. A Pakistani F-16 aircraft crashed on its own territory, in the Lam Valley area along the Indian air space in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch and Rajouri sectors.
Amid increasing tension, the entire airspace north of Delhi has been vacated, official sources said, according to news agency Press Trust of India.
Earlier in the day, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj, in a visit to China, said India wants to avoid any “further escalation of the situation” and will “continue to act with responsibility and restraint”.
The US asked Pakistan to take “meaningful action” against terror groups, with the Donald Trump administration calling for India and Pakistan to “exercise restraint” amid heightened tension between the two.
