Islamabad - Saba:
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif announced on Wednesday that the Pakistani military had shot down five Indian aircraft."We captured some Indian soldiers and shot down five Indian aircraft," Asif said in statements reported by Bloomberg.
He added, "We will certainly talk to India if these hostilities cease."
Earlier on Tuesday, Pakistan's defense minister said his country would respond strongly and decisively to the Indian attacks.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, for his part, affirmed on Wednesday that his country reserves the full right to respond to the military operation launched by India last night.
"The cunning enemy launched a cowardly attack on five locations in Pakistan. Pakistan reserves the full right to respond forcefully to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong and decisive response will be given," Sharif said in a post on Twitter.
He added, "The entire nation stands with the Pakistani Armed Forces, and the morale and spirit of the Pakistani people are high. The Pakistani people and the Pakistani Armed Forces know well how to deal with the enemy. We will never allow the enemy to succeed in achieving its malicious objectives."
On Tuesday evening, India announced the launch of a military operation against Pakistan, dubbed Operation Sindur, which it said aims to "strike terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir, from which attacks against India have been planned and launched," according to the Indian news agency ANI.
For his part, the Director General of the Pakistani Army's Media Wing, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said, "Pakistan will respond to this [attack] at a time and place of its choosing. This provocation will not go unanswered. This was a shameful and cowardly attack carried out from within Indian airspace. They were never allowed to violate Pakistani airspace."
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