CNN —
Tensions between India and Pakistan have escalated further after a top Pakistani official claimed early Wednesday it has “credible intelligence” that New Delhi will carry out a military action against Islamabad within the next two days.
The claim came as both the United States and China urged restraint.
“Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends carrying out military action against Pakistan in the next 24-36 hours,” Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said in an unusual middle of the night post on X. He did not elaborate on what evidence Pakistan had used to make the claim.
Tarar’s comments come just one week after militants massacred 26 tourists in the mountainous town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, a rampage that has sparked widespread outrage.
India has accused Pakistan of being involved in the attack — a claim Islamabad denies. Pakistan has offered a neutral investigation into the incident.
CNN has contacted India’s defense ministry for response to Tarar’s claims.
Kashmir, one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints, is controlled in part by India and Pakistan but both countries claim it in its entirety.
The two nuclear-armed rivals have fought three wars over the mountainous territory that is now divided by a de-facto border called the Line of Control since their independence from Britain nearly 80 years ago.
Last week’s attack sparked immediate widespread anger in India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is under tremendous pressure to retaliate with force.
India conducted airstrikes inside Pakistan in 2019 following a major insurgent attack on paramilitary personnel inside Indian-administered Kashmir. It was the first such incursion into Pakistan’s territory since a 1971 war between the two neighbors.
The latest attack on tourists in Kashmir has sparked fears that India might respond in a similar way.
Modi vowed to pursue the attackers “to the ends of the earth” in a fiery speech last week. The massacre set off an escalating tit-for-tat exchange of hostilities between the two countries over the past week.
Pakistan’s Tarar on Wednesday claimed any “military adventurism by India would be responded to assuredly and decisively.”
