Residents and officials of Budgam district, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, said one Indian plane crashed in an open field there at about 10:15 a.m. local time.
“It was an Indian Air Force jet. The jet is completely charred and we have recovered the dead body of the pilot,” said Syed Sehrish Asgar, the deputy commissioner of Budgam district.
Rashid Ahmad Mir, a resident of Budgam, said he heard a loud crash and looked out his window to find smoke billowing out from a nearby field. He rushed to the scene of the flames and found a charred body.
In the early hours of Tuesday morning, India’s Air Force entered Pakistan to strike what the government claimed was a training camp belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group in Balakot, Khyber-Pakhtunkwha Province, resulting in “heavy casualties.” But the Pakistani government and residents of the area reached by telephone said the strikes instead struck an open ravine, resulting in minimal damage.
Those strikes were in response to the Feb. 14 suicide bombing by Jaish-e-Mohammed on an Indian paramilitary convoy in Kashmir, which New Delhi vowed to respond to. The suicide bombing killed 40 Indian soldiers, the worst incident in Kashmir in three decades.
Jaish-e-Mohammed is classified as a terrorist group by the United Nations and blacklisted. Although the group is formally banned by Pakistan’s government, American and Indian officials say it operates freely in the country, which Islamabad denies.
In an effort to diffuse tensions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the foreign ministers of both India and Pakistan on Tuesday evening.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/world/asia/kashmir-india-pakistan-aircraft.html
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