The Indian armed forces early Wednesday carried out missile attacks on nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, including Muridke and Bahawalpur, which are the strongholds of terror groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, respectively.
The attacks, which were carried out at 1.44 am, were in response to the terror attack in Pahalgam in Jammu & Kashmir's Anantnag district that claimed 26 lives — 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen — on April 22.
Taking note of the strikes, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his country has “every right to respond forcefully to this act of war”. “The Pakistani nation and the Pakistani armed forces know how to deal with the enemy. We will never allow the enemy to succeed in their nefarious goals,” he said.
India's strikes come hours before a planned security mock drill across the country for “effective civil defence in the event of a hostile attack”, across 244 districts. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to pursue the perpetrators of the attack and those who took part in its conspiracy to the “ends of the earth” to inflict punishment on them “beyond their imagination”.
The BuckStopper, run by a group of seasoned journalists, holds the powerful accountable. The buck stops with them, as they cannot shrug off their official responsibilities.
