Pakistan says 'shall respond' to India's 'uncalled-for aggression'

In the wake of India's airstrikes on purported militant training camps, Pakistan is talking retaliation.

The office of Prime Minister Imran Khan said in a statement that "India has committed uncalled-for aggression to which Pakistan shall respond at the time and place of its choosing."

"This action has been done for domestic consumption in the election environment, putting regional peace and stability at grave risk," the statement said, referring to general elections in India that start in two months.

In a posting on Twitter, the spokesman for the Pakistani armed forces, Major General Asif Ghafoor, said the Indian military aircraft crossed into Pakistan airspace but were driven back.

Ghafoor alleged that Indian jets crossed the Line of Control (LoC) and were pushed back by Pakistan Air Force jets that were scrambled to the scene. He said Indian jets had dropped their bombs in an empty forested area; "No infrastructure got hit, no casualties."

The LoC is the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the disputed Kashmir region.

The Pakistani military official also pledged that the army would respond to the airstrikes at an unspecified time.

"It is your turn now to wait and get ready for our surprise," Ghafoor said.

Earlier, India's Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters in New Delhi that the airstrikes took place in the early hours of Tuesday, and came in response to "credible intelligence" about potential militant attacks. Gokhale said the camp was run by Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group India blames for a car bomb attack in Pulwama in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 40 Indian paramilitary troops on February 14.

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At least 44 people have been killed and several others wounded after a car filled with explosives rammed into an Indian military convoy in Kashmir.

In New Delhi, senior authorities said a "very large number" of JeM militants were killed in the airstrikes.

Addressing an election rally a few hours after the airstrikes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about protecting India. "I want to assure my countrymen that the country is in safe hands."

Modi has threatened a "jaw-breaking" response to the February 14 bombing.

India's military had been weighing up a response to the bomb attack, conducting raids over the past two weeks to weed out armed fighters hiding in Kashmir.

Drone gets shot down

In a separate development on Tuesday, India's air force shot down a drone near the frontier with Pakistan.

Indian police sources said villagers discovered debris from a drone not far from the Pakistan border in western Gujarat. An investigation has begun into whether the drone came from Pakistan, the sources said.

Nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India frequently claim to have shot down surveillance aircraft in each other's territory.

PressTV-Indian jets strike ‘militant training camp’ inside Pakistan

India says it has conducted airstrikes against “terror camps” inside Pakistan, escalating tensions with its nuclear-armed neighbor to a new level.

Tensions between the two neighbors have drawn international attention. China and the European Union have called for both sides to show restraint.

A spokeswoman for the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Maja Kocijancic, called on India and Pakistan to "avoid further escalation of tensions."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Beijing hopes India and Pakistan will work toward regional stability.

"Pakistan and India are two important countries in South Asia. Maintaining good relations and communication between the two sides is conducive to regional peace and stability. And it is fundamentally in line with the interests of both India and Pakistan. China hopes the two sides could exercise restraint, and take measures to stabilize the regional situation and improve bilateral ties, instead of doing the opposite."

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls on India and Pakistan to immediately de-escalate tensions, following a deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir.

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