Pakistan says it has shot down two Indian military jets and captured two pilots in a major escalation between the nuclear powers over Kashmir.
India says it lost one MiG21 fighter and a pilot was missing in action.
Pakistani PM Imran Khan said the two sides could not afford a miscalculation with the weapons they had.
India and Pakistan – both nuclear-armed states – claim all of Kashmir, but control only parts of it.
They have fought three wars since independence from Britain and partition in 1947. All but one were over Kashmir. The aerial attacks across the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Indian and Pakistani territory are the first since a war in 1971. They follow a militant attack in Kashmir which killed 40 Indian troops – the deadliest to take place during a three-decade insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir. A Pakistan-based group said it carried out the attack. The BBC’s Soutik Biswas, in Delhi, says the challenge for India and Pakistan now is to contain the latest escalation before things get completely out of control.
Pakistan’s information ministry published but subsequently deleted a video purporting to show one of the Indian pilots that the Pakistani military says it has captured. In the video, the pilot – who is blindfolded and appears to have blood on his face – identifies himself as Wing-Commander Abhinandan. The ministry also tweeted what it said was footage of one of the downed Indian jets. In India, Ministry of External Affairs spokesman Raveesh Kumar acknowledged the loss of a jet and its pilot. He also said that an Indian plane had shot down a Pakistani fighter jet and Indian ground forces observed it falling on the Pakistani side of the LoC. Pakistan has denied any of its jets had been hit. In a televised address, Prime Minister Khan offered India talks over terrorism and warned against further escalation. “If we let it happen, it will remain neither in my nor Narendra Modi’s control,” he said. “Our action is just to let them know that just like they intruded into our territory, we are also capable of going into their territory,” he added. Mr Modi has not yet made any comment, but Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said her country would act “with responsibility and restraint”.
“India does not wish to see further escalation of the situation,” she said, speaking from a meeting with Russian and Chinese foreign ministers in China. Pakistan’s assertion that it had shot down two Indian aircraft came shortly after Islamabad said its warplanes had struck targets in Indian territory. Indian authorities said the Pakistani jets had been forced to withdraw. Pakistan’s military spokesman Maj Gen Ghafoor said jets had “engaged” six targets in Indian territory but then carried out air strikes on “open ground”. India said Tuesday’s air strikes on Balakot in north-western Pakistan killed a large number of militants, but Pakistan said there had been no casualties. The US, EU and China have all called for restraint. The challenge for India and Pakistan now is to contain the escalation before things get completely out of control.
It is almost unprecedented for two nuclear-armed countries to carry out air strikes into each other’s territories.
“We are in uncharted waters,” Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to the US and adviser to three Pakistani prime ministers, told me late on Tuesday. An Indian defence analyst believes Indian security forces will now have to be prepared for a “full spectrum of conflict”.
However Daniel Markey from Johns Hopkins University in the US says we are “several steps away” from nuclear escalation. A further escalation, he believes, will happen if Pakistan’s “next step were to raise the stakes by hitting Indian civilian targets”.
AFP from Islamabad adds: Pakistan and India said Wednesday they had shot down each other’s warplanes, in a dramatically escalating confrontation that has fuelled concerns of a catastrophic conflict between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan called for talks between the neighbours, saying “better sense should prevail”.
“Can we afford any miscalculation with the kind of weapons that we have and you have?” he asked.
While both sides have sought to play down the threat of war, the rare air force engagement over the divided and disputed territory of Kashmir significantly raises the stakes in a standoff sparked by a suicide attack on the Indian-controlled side earlier this month.
Pakistan said it downed two Indian jets in its airspace and captured two pilots, while India confirmed the loss of one of its planes and said it had shot down a Pakistani fighter jet.
In a sign of the deepening crisis, Pakistan closed its airspace “until further notice”. At least six airports were shuttered in India, and a vast area north of New Delhi was closed to civilian flights.
A Pakistani military spokesman said that one of the downed Indian planes had fallen in Pakistani-held Kashmir, while the other came down on the Indian side of the heavily militarised de facto border dividing the Himalayan territory. “We do not want escalation, we do not want to go towards war,” Major General Asif Ghafoor told a press conference.One of the captured pilots was in custody and the other was in hospital, he said.
Ghafoor said the jets had been shot down after Pakistani planes earlier flew across the Line of Control, the de facto border in Kashmir, to the Indian side in a show of strength, hitting non-military targets including supply depots. Afterwards, he said, the two Indian planes crossed the LoC into Pakistani airspace.
