Quick Reads
Summary is AI generated, newsroom reviewed.
The April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam marks an escalation in tensions.
India conducted precision strikes on terror camps in response to this attack.
The Resistance Front, linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, is behind the Pahalgam attack.
New Delhi:
The attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22 was the “original escalation”, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on Thursday as he gave details about India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’, in which the Indian armed forces carried out precision strikes on terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
“The first thing that must be kept in mind is that the attack of April 22 in Pahalgam was the original escalation. The action that was taken against Pakistan and PoK-based terror camps by the Indian armed forces was a response to that escalation,” the foreign secretary said.
The top diplomat also spoke about The Resistance Front – the terror group behind the Pahalgam attack, which is a shadow arm of the globally banned Lashkar-e-Taiba. “This terror outfit has been reported earlier by Indian authorities. Information had been provided to the United Nations 1267 sanctions monitoring committee. We will be meeting the UN team again very soon and shall be providing an update to the information given earlier.”
He added that “India’s response to the original escalation has been non-escalatory, precise, controlled, accurate, measured, and considered. No military targets have been selected. Only terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and PoK has been hit.”
India has made it clear that any strike by Pakistan now, will only be treated as further escalation and not retaliation.
Addressing the disinformation emanating out of Pakistan, Mr Misri said, “There are a number of issues that have been raised in commentaries and lot of unfounded disinformation and fabrication has come from across the border. India would like to set the record straight.”
“The first of these is that Pakistan has tried to wash its hands off any and all involvement with terrorism. Pakistan’s information minister claimed there are no terrorists in Pakistan – and he was challenged on that on television,” he said, adding that “Pakistan’s reputation as the epicenter of global terrorism is rooted in a number of instances where concrete evidence is available, not just to India, but to governments, authorities and agencies across the world.”
“Numerous incidents of terror globally have had Pakistan’s fingerprints. I don’t need to emphasize the point about where Osama bin Laden was found, and who called him a martyr. Pakistan has also for decades pursued cross-border terrorism into India with impunity,” he noted.
“In the past, Pakistan had also deliberately misled the international community, claiming that terrorist Sajid Mir was dead, but after global pressure, they brought Sajid Mir back to life and took him in custody,” the top diplomat said.
Pakistan, he said, is also home to a very large number of UN-proscribed terrorists, as well as terrorists declared by a number of other governments in the world, including Lashkar and Jaish, and their chief Masood Azhar and Hafiz Saeed.
