Pakistan has “completely rejected” India’s claim to have sent troops across its disputed border in Kashmir to kill suspected militants, as India has evacuated villages near the frontier amid concerns about a military escalation.In a rare public announcement of such a raid, India on Thursday said it had carried out “surgical strikes”, 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 about the operation.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif maintained that India fired 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 on Friday.
Domestic pressure had been building on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to retaliate after 19 soldiers were killed in a Sep 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.
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”.
India’s announcement on Thursday has raised the possibility of military escalation between the rivals that could wreck a 2003 Kashmir ceasefire.
India evacuated more than 10,000 villagers living near the border, and ordered security forces to upgrade surveillance along the frontier in Jammu and Kashmir state, part of the 3,300-km (2,100 miles) frontier.
Hundreds of villages were being cleared along a 15 km (9 mile) strip in the lowland region of Jammu and further north in the mountains of Kashmir.
