April 30 (UPI) -- Pakistan accused India on Wednesday of planning an imminent military strike using a terror attack that killed 26 Indian tourists in the disputed Kashmir region last week as a "false pretext" to hit out at its neighbor.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Islamabad had "credible intelligence" that the strike by New Delhi would be launched in the next 24 to 36 hours, warning that reckless actions by Indian forces would be met with a forceful response.
"Any such military adventurism by India would be responded to assuredly and decisively," he said without providing any specifics to support the claim that India was poised to attack.
Pakistan denies any involvement in the April 22 Baisaran Valley attack in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. Indian police said two of the four suspects in the attack, in which male Hindus were allegedly singled out and killed, are Pakistani citizens. The third suspect is local -- but there was no information regarding the fourth person.
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However, the incident has re-ignited tensions over the region, which both countries claim sovereignty over, dating back to the partition of British India in 1947, with the nuclear-armed neighbors exchanging fire over the line of control at the weekend after Indian officials closed the main India-Pakistan border crossing and suspended a water-sharing agreement.
The spat has also seen Pakistani diplomats expelled and some Pakistani citizens have their Indian visas canceled and given 48 hours to get out of the country. Islamabad has called for a "neutral" investigation, with which it said it would give its full cooperation.
Concern has been growing that India will mount a military response in line with its reaction to previous attacks in 2016 and 2019 in the semi-autonomous Himalayan territory, where Islamic separatists have been fighting a three-and-a-half-decade-long insurgency against Indian rule. India revoked Kashmir's semi-autonomous status in 2019.
Both the United States and China urged the sides to pull back from the brink.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was calling for calm and planned to speak to the foreign ministers of India and Pakistani as soon as practicable, potentially on Tuesday.
"We are reaching out to both parties, and telling, of course, them to not escalate the situation," Bruce told a news briefing in Washington.
The United States is well placed to exert a positive influence on the ground as it has strategic partnerships with both countries.
China, which also claims control of part of Kashmir with its forces repeatedly engaging in high-altitude clashes with Indian forces along their shared border, also called for restraint.
According to the Chinese state-run CGTN TV news network, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Pakistan's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, in a call last week that confrontation between Pakistan and India threatened regional security would "not serve the fundamental interests" of either side.
India and Pakistan went to war over the region in 1947-1948, in 1965, and most recently in 1999.
