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India's foreign ministry has confirmed that one of its air force's Mikoyan MiG-21 fighters has been shot down amid escalating tensions with its neighbour, Pakistan. In a televised statement, a foreign ministry official said Pakistan had launched an incursion into Indian airspace "targeting military installations" in the disputed region of Kashmir on 27 February. "But due to our high state of readiness and alertness, Pakistan's attempts were foiled successfully. The Pakistan air force was detected and the Indian air force responded immediately." During the aerial engagement that followed, one aircraft from each side was shot down, the official says. "The...

India and Pakistan both said they shot down each other’s fighter jets on Wednesday, with Pakistan capturing an Indian pilot a day after Indian warplanes struck inside Pakistan for the first time since a 1971 war, prompting world powers to urge restraint. Both countries have ordered air strikes over the last two days, the first time in history that two nuclear-armed powers have done so, while ground forces have exchanged fire in more than a dozen locations.

At least nine people were killed and dozens wounded in cross-border firing by Indian and Pakistani forces on Friday, officials said, increasing tensions less than a week after high-level talks between the estranged neighbors were called off. The exchange of fire on Friday is the latest in a series of cross-border incidents between the nuclear-armed South Asian rivals, in which dozens of soldiers and civilians on both sides have died over the last year. The prime ministers from both countries had agreed on a number of measures last month to reduce tensions, including a meeting between senior border security officials...

New Delhi - Terming as "outlandish and bizarre" the statement of Chuck Hagel, the new US Defence Secretary, that India has financed problems for Pakistan in Afghanistan, BJP today asked the government to exert diplomatic pressure on Washington for unconditional withdrawal of his statement. The statement given by Hagel that India has financed problems in Pakistan is "outlandish, bizarre and baseless," BJP spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said. He also expressed surprise over Hagel giving a clean to Pakistan, which has harboured in the backyard of its military base al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, who was responsible for killing of...

WASHINGTON: American conservatives trying to torpedo the confirmation of Senator Chuck Hagel, President Obama's nominee for US defence secretary, have pulled out an "India card". Hagel has been accused of fingering India for its alleged disruptive role against Pakistan in Afghanistan. A shocked New Delhi, which sees Hagel as a friend, angrily denied any suggestion that India is a troublemaker in the region. The provocative remark, in which Senator Hagel accuses New Delhi of "financing problems" for Pakistan in Afghanistan, was dredged out by a conservative publication on the eve of his confirmation hearing which his former Republican colleagues have...

New Delhi/Washington: India has sharply rejected that it "financed problems" in Afghanistan to create trouble for Pakistan, as alleged by Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama's Defence Secretary nominee. Despite the controversy, the US Senate on Tuesday cleared the way for confirmation of Mr Hagel to be the US' next Defense Secretary. The confirmation is expected later in the day. "Senator Hagel's remarks are in sharp contrast to the viewpoint of the Obama Administration that has always been in praise of India's developmental role in Afghanistan and in fact has been pressing New Delhi to do more in Afghanistan," a statement...

ISLAMABAD: Omar Saeed Sheikh, a detained Pakistani militant, had made hoax calls to President Asif Ali Zardari and the Chief of Army Staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a bid to heighten Pakistan-India tensions after last year’s terrorist attacks on Mumbai, investigators have told Dawn. ‘Omar Saeed Sheikh was the hoax caller. It was he who threatened the civilian and military leaderships of Pakistan over telephone. And he did so from inside Hyderabad jail,’ investigators said. The controversy came to light after Dawn broke the story, exactly one year ago, that a hoax caller claiming to be then Indian foreign...

India 'regrets' emergency rule in nuclear-armed Pakistan India said on Saturday that it regretted the difficult times Pakistan was passing through and said it hoped that the country would return to normalcy soon. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee called a crisis meeting to discuss the implications for India of the imposition of emergency in Pakistan. “We regret the difficult times that Pakistan is passing through. We trust that conditions of normalcy will soon return permitting the transition to democracy and stability to continue,” the MEA spokesman said. The Congress expressed hope that the turbulence in...

Time to annex pakistan and make it a slum