All communication channels with Indian military open: Pak army

All communication channels with the Indian military including the hotline are open, the Pakistan army has said, even as it accused India of escalating tensions.

All communication channels with the Indian military including the hotline are open, the Pakistan army has said, even as it accused India of escalating tensions.

An army jawan deployed on Amritsar-Attari road in wake of Indo-Pak tension .(PTI)

“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,” Director-General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt Gen Asim Bajwa 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 told China’s state-run Xinhua news agency on Thursday.

At least two Pakistani soldiers have been killed while nine injured in the Indian firing over the past week, the general said.

However, the army spokesman emphasised on the importance of resolving the 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 monitors the situation and reports to its headquarters.

India carried out surgical strikes on seven terror launch pads across the LoC on the intervening night of September 28 and 29, with the Army saying it had inflicted “significant casualties” on terrorists preparing to infiltrate from PoK.

The strike came just days after the attack by Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed on an Indian army camp in Uri in Kashmir that killed 19 soldiers.