A Pakistan minister on Tuesday stirred up a storm on social media after he claimed that his country would carry out a missile attack on any nation that supported India on the Kashmir issue. While some laughed off the comment of Ali Amin Gandapur, minister for Kashmir affairs and Gilgit Baltistan, others lambasted him for whipping up a war hysteria in the region.
"If tensions with India rises on Kashmir, Pakistan will be compelled to go to war. Hence, those countries backing India and not Pakistan (over Kashmir) will be considered as our enemy and a missile will be fired at India and those nations supporting it," Gandapur can be heard saying in a video widely shared on social media.
Pakistan-based journalist Naila Inayat, sharing the video on Twitter, took a sarcastic jibe at Gandapur saying, “I hope (US President) Trump received the message”.
Relations between India and Pakistan nosedived after New Delhi on August 5 scrapped provisions of Article 370 that gave special status to Jammu and Kashmir, and bifurcated the state into two Union territories.
While Pakistan called the move a breach of international conventions, India has categorically maintained that Kashmir is its internal matter.
As tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours mounted, Pakistani leaders were engaged in making provocative statements with Prime Minister Imran Khan himself raising a war threat. In his maiden speech at United Nationas General Assembly in New York in September, Khan devoted most part of his 50-minute speech for Kashmir.
Earlier in August, Pakistan Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said a full-blown war between Pakistan and India is likely to happen in November.