Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned the missile attack launched in the early hours of the morning by India on Pakistan, which caused dozens of deaths, while warning of the risk of an ‘all-out war’ in the region between the two nuclear powers – which have previously fought four bloody war – after the Pakistani defence minister warned just hours before the attack that ‘If India attacks Pakistan, no one else will survive in this world’.
In a statement, Ankara said that Turkey is closely monitoring the latest developments in this region of Asia and called on both sides to exercise restraint and avoid unilateral actions such as those carried out last night by India: ‘The attack carried out by India last night (6 May) raises the risk of an all-out war. We condemn such provocative steps as well as attacks targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure,’ the text said.
‘We expect that measures will be taken to reduce tensions in the region as soon as possible and that the necessary mechanisms, including in the field of counter-terrorism, will be put in place to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents. We also support Pakistan’s call for an investigation into the 22 April terrorist attack,’ the statement issued by Turkey concluded.
India and Pakistan exchanged heavy artillery fire overnight along the border of the disputed region of Kashmir after the Indian army launched a massive missile attack on Pakistani territory in the Jammu and Kashmir regions, in the worst escalation of war between the two countries in two decades. The government in Islamabad reported at least 26 civilians killed in the Indian attacks, while New Delhi confirmed eight deaths from artillery bombardments launched in response by the Pakistani army.
Pakistan warns of ‘retaliation’ and confirms the downing of Indian fighter jets
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif again accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of seeking a ‘war for political purposes’ to boost his domestic popularity, but warned that ‘retaliation has already begun’ on Pakistan’s part, claiming that ‘five enemy aircraft’ had been shot down. Indian government sources limited themselves to confirming that three Indian fighter jets had crashed on the Indian side of Kashmir, without giving details about the causes or the fate of the pilots.
Pakistan had warned days earlier that it had ‘credible intelligence reports’ that India was planning an imminent military attack in retaliation for the attack carried out by a Pakistan-based terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, which on 22 April killed 26 people, most of them Indians, at a tourist resort in Pahalgam, in the New Delhi-controlled part of Kashmir.
India accuses the Islamabad government of being behind the attack, but Pakistan rejects these accusations and has repeatedly called for an independent international investigation into the terrorist attack, a position supported by Turkey, which has close political and economic ties to the Pakistani government.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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