{"id":33382,"date":"2019-02-27T05:23:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T05:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33382"},"modified":"2019-02-27T05:23:21","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T05:23:21","slug":"us-urges-india-pakistan-to-avoid-escalation-at-any-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=33382","title":{"rendered":"US urges India, Pakistan to ‘avoid escalation at any cost’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has urged India and Pakistan to avoid “further military activity” following a dramatic escalation in tensions between the two South Asian neighbours.<\/p>\n

His comments on Tuesday came a day after Pakistan<\/a> said\u00a0it reserved the right to respond<\/a> to Indian air raids that struck near the northern Pakistani village of Jaba, located about 10km west of the border with Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and 60km from the Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.<\/p>\n

Separately, four people, including two children, were killed<\/a> and seven others wounded on Tuesday in an exchange of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s district of Kotli, according to officials.<\/p>\n

Amid the rising tensions, Pompeo said he held separate conversations with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan.<\/p>\n

“I expressed to both ministers that we encourage India and Pakistan to exercise restraint, and avoid escalation at any cost,” Pompeo said in a statement issued in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

“I also encouraged both ministers to prioritise direct communication and avoid further military activity,” he added.<\/p>\n

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Pakistan says ‘will respond’ to Indian attacks on its territory<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Conflicting claims<\/h2>\n

On Tuesday, India’s\u00a0Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale\u00a0<\/span>said the “non-military pre-emptive action” targeted a training camp for armed group Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), which claimed a suicide attack earlier this month that killed 42 Indian security forces personnel and brought tensions between the neighbours to a boil.<\/p>\n

“In this operation, a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for [suicide] action were eliminated,”\u00a0Gokhale<\/span>\u00a0told reporters in New Delhi.<\/p>\n

Pakistan, however, disputed the claim, saying that India was “lying” and that no casualties occurred from the attacks.<\/p>\n

“There is not even a single brick in the debris,” Pakistani military spokesperson Major General Asif Ghafoor said at a press conference at military headquarters in Rawalpindi.<\/p>\n

“If there was any infrastructure there, then there would be some debris. They say [hundreds of] people were killed – I say that if there were even 10 people, there would be some bodies there.”<\/p>\n

Ghafoor invited foreign diplomats and media to visit the area to verify Pakistan’s version of events.<\/p>\n

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Kashmir tension: Anxiety along the Line of Control (2:20)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n

Witnesses and local journalists told Al Jazeera that the Indian munitions appeared to strike a mostly uninhabited forest near the mountain village of Jaba.<\/p>\n

“The payload was dropped near the forest in Batrasi, it is totally uninhabited,” said Khalid Chaudhry, a local journalist. Two other journalists at the scene corroborated that version of events.<\/p>\n

Following the air raids, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan chaired a meeting of the country’s National Security Committee, which includes both civilian and military leadership.<\/p>\n

Khan also called a special meeting of Pakistan’s National Command Authority – the country’s top nuclear decision-making body – on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“Pakistan shall respond at the time and place of its choosing,” a government statement said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has urged India and Pakistan to avoid “further military activity” following a dramatic escalation in tensions between the two South Asian neighbours. His comments on Tuesday came a day after Pakistan said\u00a0it reserved the right to respond to Indian air raids that struck near the northern Pakistani village of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":33383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}