India will respond to any future Pakistani aggression with the full firepower of the Indian Navy, the defence minister said on Friday, following the worst clashes in decades between the two nuclear-armed nations.
Relations between India and Pakistan are tense after four days of fighting this month, which involved fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery before a ceasefire was announced.
Navy Poised For Retaliation
If Pakistan resorts to anything evil or unethical, it will, this time, face the firepower and ire of the Indian Navy,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on the aircraft carrier INS Vikrant off the coast of the western Indian state of Goa.
A spokesperson for Pakistan’s military referred Reuters to a May 12 statement, which said there would be a “comprehensive and decisive” response whenever Pakistan’s sovereignty was “threatened and territorial integrity violated”.
Pahalgam Terror Attack
The latest fighting erupted after 26 people, all men and mostly Hindu tourists, were killed in a terror attack on April 22 in Pahalgam in Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan territory claimed by both nations but ruled in part.
New Delhi blamed the attack on “terrorists” backed by Pakistan, which denied the charge.
A ceasefire took effect on May 10, and a top Pakistani military official told Reuters on Friday that both countries were close to reducing their troop build-up along their border to pre-conflict levels.
The Indian Navy has said it deployed its carrier battle group, submarines and other aviation assets in the northern Arabian Sea within 96 hours of the April 22 attack.
‘Not Yet Over’
Defence Minister Singh said ‘Operation Sindoor’, under which India launched the strikes on Pakistan, was paused, but not yet over.
“We stopped our military actions on our own terms. Our forces had not even started showing their might,” he said.
(With inputs from Reuters)
