Pakistan shoots down two Indian warplanes
MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistan’s air force shot down two Indian warplanes yesterday, after they crossed the boundary between the two nucleararmed rivals in the disputed territory of Kashmir yesterday, and captured two Indian pilots, a military spokesman said.
The dramatic escalation came hours after Pakistan said mortar shells fired by Indian troops from across the frontier dividing the two sectors of Kashmir killed six civilians and wounded others.
Pakistan’s army spokesman Majgen Asif Ghafoor said one of the pilots is injured and is being treated in a military hospital. He did not elaborate on the pilot’s injuries.
Ghafoor says the other pilot is in custody, and that both are being ‘‘treated well’’.
One of the downed planes crashed in Pakistan’s part of Kashmir, while the other went down in the Indiancontrolled section of the Himalayan region, he said.
Earlier yesterday, senior Indian police officer Munir Ahmed Khan had said an Indian Air Force plane crashed in the Indiancontrolled sector of Kashmir and that it was not immediately known if there were casualties.
Another police officer, S.P. Pani, said firefighters were at the site in Budgam area where the Indian warplane crashed.
Indian news reports said airports in the Indian portion of Kashmir closed for civilian traffic shortly after the air force jet crashed in the area. The Press Trust of India news agency said these airports were located at Srinagar, Jammu and Leh.
Indian authorities declined to comment.
Indian administrator Baseer Khan confirmed that the airport in Srinagar, the main city in Indiancontrolled Kashmir, was closed and said it was a ‘‘temporary and precautionary measure.’’
Meanwhile, the foreign ministry in Islamabad said the country’s air force was carrying out airstrikes from within Pakistani airspace across the disputed Kashmir boundary, but that this was not in ‘‘retaliation to continued Indian belligerence.’’
The ministry said the strikes were aimed at ‘‘avoiding human loss and collateral damage.’’
It says the Pakistanis have ‘‘no intention of escalation, but are fully prepared to do so if forced into that paradigm. That is why we undertook the action with clear warning and in broad daylight.’’
According to local Pakistani police official Mohammad Altaf, the six fatalities in the shelling earlier yesterday included children. The shells hit the village of Kotli in Pakistan’s section of Kashmir.
Though Pakistani and Indian troops in Kashmir often trade fire, the latest civilian casualties came a day after tensions escalated following a predawn airstrike and incursion by India on Tuesday that New Delhi said targeted a terrorist training camp in northwestern Pakistan. — AP