MUZAFARABAD, Pakistan (AP) Pakistans military said today it shot down two Indian warplanes in the disputed region of Kashmir and captured a pilot, raising tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals to a level unseen in the last two decades.
India acknowledged one of its air force planes was lost in skirmishes with Pakistan and that its pilot was missing in action on a chaotic day, which also saw mortar shells fired by Indian troops from across the frontier dividing the two sectors of Kashmir kill six civilians and wound several others. A helicopter crash in the region also killed six Indian air force officials and a civilian on the ground.
Pakistan responded by shutting down its civilian airspace as Prime Minister Imran Khan called for negotiations with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, to ensure better sense can prevail.
Lets sit together to talk to find a solution, Khan said. There was no immediate reaction from Modi.
The aircraft went down Wednesday morning in Kashmir, a mountainous region claimed by both India and Pakistan since almost immediately after their creation in 1947. One of the downed planes crashed in Pakistans part of Kashmir while the other went down in Indian-controlled section of the Himalayan region, Pakistans army spokesman Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor said.
Pakistani troops on the ground captured an Indian pilot, he later said, after earlier saying it captured two. He did not explain what caused the confusion.
The pilot was injured and was being treated at a military hospital, Ghafoor said. He did not elaborate beyond saying the pilots were being treated well and made no mention of them being returned to India.
We have no intention of escalation, but are fully prepared to do so if forced into that paradigm, he added.
Indias External Affairs Ministry spokesman Raveesh Kumar said one of its MiG-21 fighter aircraft was missing. He said India was still ascertaining whether its pilot was in Pakistans custody. He said one Pakistani aircraft was shot down, something Pakistan denied.
Meanwhile, Indian police said officials recovered seven bodies from the wreckage of an Indian Air Force chopper that crashed in Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir, which included six Indian airmen and a civilian on the ground. They gave no cause for the crash.
Senior police officer Munir Ahmed Khan said the chopper crashed close to an airport on Wednesday in Budgam area, in the outskirts of the regions main city of Srinagar. The Srinagar airport, which has been shut along with two other airports for civilian flights in the region, is also an air force station.
Eyewitnesses said soldiers fired in air to keep residents away from the crash site.
Hours later, Pakistans Civil Aviation Authority said it shut Pakistani airspace to all commercial flights on Wednesday, without elaborating or indicating when the flights might resume. It was not clear if the shutdown applied to commercial overflights, though aviation authorities in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates stopped all flights to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad said the countrys air force was carrying out airstrikes Wednesday from within Pakistani airspace across the disputed Kashmir boundary but that this was not in retaliation to continued Indian belligerence.
Ghafoor, the Pakistani military spokesman, said the strikes were aimed at avoiding human loss and collateral damage.
