Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif on Friday said his country's armed forces will give "a befitting response to any misadventure" by Islamabad's adversaries, referring to India, PTI reported. The so-called warning came a day after India announced that its Army had carried out surgical strikes along the Line of Control.
Sharif, who was at the new Combat Reaction Training facility near the Lahore Garrison, directed Pakistani troops to be prepared to defend the country in case of a war. He asked the commanders to emphasise on combat readiness and continue training as much as possible. "The training in peacetime is the only guarantor of averting and winning a war if imposed," Sharif added.
The Army chief made the statement the same day Jamaat-ud-Dawa Chief Hafiz Saeed urged Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to allow the Army to carry out strikes against India. He threatened that "Pakistan will show India what surgical strikes are", according to ANI. The 26/11 Mumbai attacks mastermind said India's claim of carrying out surgical strikes was a staged drama by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. India's Director General of Military Operations Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh had announced on Thursday said that the surgical strikes were carried out to bust terror launchpads and foil infiltration plans along the LoC.
Saeed also claimed that the September 18 militant attack on the Indian Army's Uri base was the handiwork of Kashmiri mujahideen. He accused India of tweaking the toll in the attack, according to The Indian Express. "While India claims only 20 soldiers died, they are hiding from the media that as many as 177 Indian Army men, including colonels and majors, were killed and many others injured," Saeed said.
Referring to the international support that India has garnered after the surgical strikes, Saeed said even the United States will not be able to curb Pakistan. "The world was silent when Kashmiris were being killed. The US and others woke up only when the Kashmiri mujahideen responded in Uri," he added.
India's Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Saturday said Pakistan should not presume that "India's silence is weakness", ANI reported, and added that if the country continued "such conspiracies", it would respond. "Pakistan didn't probe the matter as it is still in shock after the surgical strike," he said.
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