India calls back envoy from Pakistan following Pulwama attack

F.P. Report

ISLAMABAD: India on Friday called back its High Commissioner to Islamabad following the suicide attack in Occupied Kashmir’s Pulwama district.

India media says that Ajay Basaria will fly to New Delhi tonight for consultation over the situation arisen after the attack.

On the other hand, Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale summoned Pakistani High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood lodge diplomatic protest over the incident.

The Indian government has blamed Pakistan for Pulwama attack and threatened to isolate it at international level. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said those behind the terror attack would pay a “very heavy price” and had made a “huge mistake”.

Union Minister Arun Jaitley said they will take all possible diplomatic steps to ensure “complete isolation” of Pakistan and has withdrawn ‘Most Favoured Nation’ status to the country.

PAKISTAN REJECTS INDIAN ALLEGATIONS

Pakistan had strongly rejected insinuation by elements in the Indian government and media circles that seek to link the attack to the State of Pakistan without investigations.

“The attack in Pulwama in the Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir is a matter of grave concern,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in a press release.

“We have always condemned heightened acts of violence in the Valley.”

Pakistan is likely to give strong reply to New Delhi at diplomatic level for levelling allegations without even investigating the Pulwama attack.

PULWAMA SUICIDE ATTACK

At least 44 Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed on Thursday in Indian-occupied Kashmir in one the deadliest attacks. The attack saw explosives packed inside a van rip through buses in a convoy of 78 vehicles carrying some 2,500 members of the paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

Two blue buses carrying around 35 people each bore the brunt of the massive blast, heard miles away, around 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the city of Srinagar on the main highway to Jammu.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since independence. The Kashmiris have been fighting for an independent Kashmir, or a merger with Pakistan, for 30 years.

Last year was the deadliest in a decade, with rights monitors saying almost 600 Kashmiri people died, most of them civilians. Thousands more have been maimed in recent years by pellet-firing shotguns used by Indian forces.