13.32 BSTPakistan defence minister: drone incursion makes attack on India 'increasingly certain'Pakistan’s defence minister has told Reuters that it is “increasingly certain” that Pakistan will attack India after it claimed Indian drones had staged incursions into Pakistan.In comments reported by the news agency, Khawaja Asif said that the US had been leading international efforts to de-escalate the situation, but there was hardly any space left to de-escalate, and the conflict was heading down a blind alley. Gulf nations were also involved in de-escaltion efforts, he said.He denied Indian claims to have damaged Pakistan’s air defences in Lahore, and said there had been no damage to Pakistan’s military sites from drones. He said that any retaliation would focus on military sites in India.A member of the Crime Scene Unit (CSU), inspects the fragments of what is claimed to be an Indian drone brought down on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan 8 May. Photograph: Imran Ali/ReutersPakistan and India have accused each other of overnight drone and missile attacks, with Delhi claiming to have thwarted strikes on more than a dozen cities and Islamabad claiming to have shot down 25 Indian drones.Pakistan and India trade accusations of drone attacks as conflict escalatesRead moreIndian missile strikes on Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday killed 31 people. Pakistan’s military spokesperson Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry earlier said that a confrontation with an airborne Indian device had left four Pakistani soldiers injured, and that one civilian had been killed in an incident involving a drone.Indian service personnel secure the site where missile debris was found in a field near Amritsar, India on 8 May. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty ImagesIndia alleged that Pakistan had attempted to launch drones and missiles at a number of military targets in its north and west, including in the cities of Amritsar, Srinagar and Chandigarh. It said its air defence systems stopped all the attacks.Tensions between the two countries have escalated after more than two dozen tourists – mostly Indian Hindus – were shot dead in an attack by militants in Pahalgam in Indian-controlled Kashmir on 22 April.Map of KashmirControl of Kashmir, in the foothills of the Himalayas, has been disputed since India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947.Both claim it in full, but each controls a section of the territory, separated by one of the world’s most heavily militarised borders: the “line of control”, based on a ceasefire border established after their 1947-48 war. India and Pakistan have gone to war twice since over Kashmir, most recently in 1999.Share
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