In a rare public announcement of such a raid, India said it had carried out “surgical strikes” on Thursday, sending special forces to kill men preparing to sneak into its territory and attack major cities.
Indian officials said troops had killed militants numbering in the double digits and that its soldiers had returned safely to base before dawn, but declined to provide more evidence of the operation.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif maintained that India fired unprovoked from its side of the heavily militarised frontier in the disputed region of Kashmir, the flashpoint for two of three wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours, and killed two soldiers.
“The Cabinet joined the prime minister in completely rejecting the Indian claims of carrying out ‘surgical strikes’,” Sharif’s office said in a statement issued after a cabinet meeting yesterday.
It added that the country was ready “to counter any aggressive Indian designs,” but gave no further details.
Pakistan also captured an Indian soldier on Thursday on its side of the border, but India said this was unrelated to the raid as the man had inadvertently strayed across the frontier.
Domestic pressure had been building on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to retaliate after 19 soldiers were killed in a September 18 attack on an Indian army base in Kashmir that India blames on infiltrators who crossed from Pakistani territory.
A senior leader of Modi’s ruling party declared himself satisfied with India’s “multi-pronged” response to the attack on the army base.
“For Pakistan, terrorism has come as a cheaper option all these years. Time to make it costly for it,” Ram Madhav, national general secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party, wrote in a column for the Indian Express newspaper.
India has also launched a diplomatic campaign to try and isolate Pakistan. Its decision on Tuesday to boycott a summit of South Asian leaders in November in Islamabad was followed by Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan expressing their
“inability” to attend.
While India’s public and politicians have welcomed the operation, Pakistan greeted New Delhi’s version of events with scepticism and ridicule.
Television news channels and newspapers reported only small arms and mortar fire, a relatively routine occurrence on the
de facto border.
Pakistan’s Express Tribune, an affiliate of the New York Times, led its edition with the headline “‘Surgical’ farce blows up in India’s face”.
Rising tensions have also hit cultural ties.
Pakistan said yesterday that Sharif’s special envoys had arrived in Beijing to brief China on the deteriorating situation in Indian-controlled Kashmir. China, a Pakistan ally, expressed its concern, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.