LONDON, April 28. /TASS/. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif considers India’s military invasion inevitable.
"We have reinforced our forces because it is something which is imminent now. So in that situation some strategic decisions have to be taken, so those decisions have been taken," he told Reuters.
Khawaja Asif noted that India's rhetoric was getting tougher and that the Pakistani military had informed the government of the potential attack. He offered no details on why he believed an incursion was imminent.
On April 22, armed men wearing fatigues opened fire with machine guns in the popular tourist town of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir, killing 25 Indian citizens and one Nepalese national, injuring many others. The attackers fled the scene.
In the wake of the attack, India reduced the size of its embassy staff in Islamabad by nearly half, declared the military advisors of the Pakistani diplomatic mission in India personae non gratae, and closed the key Attari checkpoint on the border. Indian authorities also suspended the agreement with Islamabad on water resource distribution and halted the issuance of visas to Pakistani citizens.