Pakistan has shot down two Indian Air Force planes in its airspace in Kashmir on Wednesday, an Indian military spokesperson said.
"PAF shot down two Indian aircrafts inside Pakistani airspace," tweeted Major General Asif Ghafoor, adding that one aircraft had fallen in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, while the other crashed on the Indian side.
Local reports said one aircraft came down in Garend Kalan village, 7km from Budgam in central Kashmir.
General Ghafoor added that one Indian pilot had been arrested by Pakistani forces.
The announcement comes just one day after Indian jets conducted an air strike on Pakistan's north-west province.
Yesterday Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the country has the "right to self-defence" after Indian jets conducted what one minister said was an air strike on "terror camps".
The air strike has dramatically escalated tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours who have fought three wars against each other.
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi. Source: AP
India foreign minister Sushma Swaraj said India now wants to avoid any "further escalation of the situation".
Swaraj stressed during talks in China with her counterparts from Beijing and Moscow that "no military installations were targeted" in the air raid, and the target was selected to avoid civilian casualties.
Australian foreign minister Marise Payne has urged Pakistan to take action against extremist groups, including Jaish-e-Mohammed which claimed responsibility for the February 14 attack in the disputed Kashmir region that .
"It [Pakistan] can no longer allow extremist groups the legal and physical space to operate from its territory," Senator Payne said on Tuesday night.
"Australia urges both sides to exercise restraint, avoid any action which would endanger peace and security in the region, and engage in dialogue to ensure that these issues are resolved peacefully."
Indian jets conducted an air strike on "terror camps" according to a minister. Pakistan has played down the incident. Source: Getty Images
China and the European Union have also urged the two countries to "exercise restraint".
"We hope that both India and Pakistan can exercise restraint and adopt actions that will help stabilise the situation in the region and improve mutual relations," China's foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.
New Delhi blamed Islamabad, which denies having a role in the attack.
Pakistan downplayed Tuesday's incident, saying there were no casualties and that Indian jets "released a payload" hastily in a forest area after crossing Kashmir's Line of Control (LoC), which acts as a de facto border between the two countries.
"Air Force carried out aerial strike early morning today at terror camps across the LoC (Line of Control) and Completely destroyed it," India's minister of state for agriculture, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, said on Twitter.
Pakistan's military confirmed Indian aircraft violated its airspace but said "no infrastructure got hit".
"Indian aircrafts intruded from Muzafarabad sector," Pakistani military spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said on Twitter early on Tuesday.
Ghafoor said "facing timely and effective response from Pakistan Air Force", the Indian aircraft "released payload in haste while escaping which fell near Balakot. No casualties or damage".
Pakistan said it would respond at a time and place of its choice, with a military spokesman even alluding to its nuclear arsenal, highlighting the escalation in hostile rhetoric from both two sides since a suicide bombing in Kashmir this month.
The spokesman said a command and control authority meeting, which decides over the use of nuclear weapons, had been convened for Wednesday, adding: “You all know what that means.”
Villagers near the town of Balakot were shaken from their sleep by the air strikes. They said only one person was wounded in the attack and they knew of no fatalities.
“We saw fallen trees and one damaged house, and four craters where the bombs had fallen,” said Mohammad Ajmal, a 25-year-old who visited the site.
Balakot, a town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan, is about 50 km from the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, which was the cause of two of the three wars India and Pakistan have fought since the end of British colonial rule in 1947.
The air strike near Balakot was the deepest cross-border raid launched by India since the last of its three wars with Pakistan in 1971 but there were competing claims about the damage it caused.
Analysts have alleged Pakistani militants have their training camps in the area, although Pakistan has always denied the presence of any such camps.
Shelling across the Kashmiri Line of Control has occurred frequently over the past few years but airspace violations by jets are extremely rare.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, facing a tight election in the next couple of months, has vowed a strong response to the in the Pulwama district of Kashmir, the deadliest single assault on Indian forces in 30 years of insurgency in the Muslim-majority region.
The attack was claimed by Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), prompting India to accuse Pakistan of harbouring the militant group. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan denied his country was involved.
JeM had also previously caused a crisis between India and Pakistan over a raid on the Indian parliament in 2001.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Source: AP
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday called on India and Pakistan to "exercise restraint" amid soaring tensions between the two nuclear-armed countries, while urging Islamabad to take action against militants.
"We encourage India and Pakistan to exercise restraint, and avoid escalation at any cost," Pompeo said in a statement after speaking with his counterparts from both countries.
Pompeo said that in talks with Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, he stressed "the priority of de-escalating current tensions by avoiding military action, and the urgency of Pakistan taking meaningful action against terrorist groups operating on its soil."
- With Reuters
