India Firing At Us Every Night, Wednesday Was the Worst: Pak Army

Islamabad: The continuing firing across the Line of Control (LoC) and the increasing “rhetoric” emanating from New Delhi will only escalate Indo-Pak tension but Islamabad has prepared its own contingency plan to deal with any situation, chief spokesman of Pakistan Army has told a Chinese news agency.

Lt. General Asim Bajwa, director-general of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), told Xinhua in an interview at the ISPR headquarters in Rawalpindi that Indian forces fired into the Pakistani side every day since September 29.

“The Indian fire came to a maximum on Wednesday as they fired over 25,000 rounds with small arms - rifles and machine-guns as well as mortars,” he said.

“The Indian forces violated the Line of Control by fire and then few hours later they made a false claim about surgical strikes' across the Line of Control. We did check everything on ground and we found the claim was absolutely false,” Xinhua quoted the army spokesman as saying in his first ever formal interview with a foreign media since the tension escalated on early September 29.

He further said "What we see is that there is more intensified firing along the LoC, and of course, when there is more fire, the situation does escalate. The environment also escalates when there is more rhetoric and more statement and more pronouncements" by the Indian side, Bajwa said.

Xinhua said Bajwa emphasized the importance of resolving current tension through dialogue. He said contacts between Pakistani and Indian armies are maintained, confirming that the Director Generals of the Military Operations have talked over the phone after the start of the cross LoC firing.

"All communication channels including the hotline between the two militaries are open," he said, adding that the UN Military Observer Group in Pakistan and India also monitor the situation and report to its headquarters.

“Pakistan wants peacefully neighborly relations with all countries in the region and that is the policy of the state of Pakistan and that is the policy of the political government and every element of power in the country follows the same policy,” said Bajwa.

Indo-Pak relations went on a downward spiral since the Uri attacks of September 18 when a jihadi suicide squad crossed over from Pakistan and attacked an Indian Army brigade HQ killing 19 soldiers. On the early hours of September 30, Indian Army carried out a surgical strike into the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir destroying terrorist infrastructure.

Pakistan has consistently denied that any such surgical strikes took place, however, a CNN-News18 investigation revealed the claim made by the Indian Army Director General of Military Operations Lt General Ranbir Singh in a press conference on September 30 indeed checked out.

In the sting op, CNN-News18’s Investigations Editor Manoj Gupta posed as an IG of Pakistan’s Punjab Police and called up Ghulam Akbar, a Superintend of Police (Special Branch), Mirpur Range (PoK), who confirmed all the claims made by the Indian DGMO and gave out a list of 5 Pakistani Army soldiers killed in the operation.