Pak media slams India’s ‘stage-managed terror acts’, focuses on LoC firing

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, Oct 03, 2016: A militant attack on an Indian Army camp in Kashmir, an exchange of fire on the Line of Control and a meeting of leaders of Pakistan’s political parties to discuss a united response to tensions with India dominated the Pakistani media on Monday.

The News and The Express Tribune carried reports on the attack on a Rashtriya Rifles camp in northern Kashmir’s Baramulla on Sunday on their front pages. A paramilitary soldier died and another was wounded in the attack that came two weeks after a similar attack killed 19 soldiers in Uri and ratcheted up tensions between India and Pakistan.

In a front page report headlined “India may stage-manage more terror acts to blame Pakistan”, The News said Pakistan’s security establishment had issued a warning that New Delhi had “hatched another sinister plan to malign Pakistan by stage-managing acts of terrorism in some major Indian cities”.

The report even described the attack in Uri as a “false flag” operation.

“Informed sources said that with the connivance and approval of hawkish Indian political leadership ‘another sinister plan’ is being stage managed,” the report said.

Newspapers also devoted a lot of space on their front pages to the meeting of the heads of Pakistan’s political parties.

“Indian hostilities unite politicians at capital huddle”, read the headline in The Express Tribune. The Dawn headlined its report “Party heads to mull over unified response to India today”.

The Tribune reported that all but two of the country’s political parties – Sheikh Rashid Ahmed’s Awami Muslim League and Pervez Musharraf’s All Pakistan Muslim League – had been invited to the meet.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif convened the meet to “muster support of all political parties on escalating tensions with India and unabated rights abuses” in Kashmir, the daily reported.

The report said the timing of the meet is significant as Imran Khan, the head of the opposition Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf, had launched a campaign against Sharif’s PML-N over the Panama Papers leak scandal.

The leaked documents showed Sharif’s three children were among Pakistanis who owned offshore assets worth millions of dollars.

The Dawn reported that the meet had a “one-point agenda of sending a clear message to the outside world following Indian aggression along the Line of Control”.

The daily quoted an unnamed member of the cabinet as saying that the meeting is meant to “let the whole world know that Pakistan stood united against Indian warmongering and wanted to highlight the plight of the people of Kashmir”.


Pakistani news websites also focused on the latest exchange of fire between troops of the two countries.

“Indian forces open fire along LoC once again, get befitting response” was the headline for the main story on the website of ARY News channel. The headline on the website of Samaa TV channel was “Pakistan Army silences Indian guns across LoC”.

An editorial in the Dawn -- titled “Defusing tensions” -- said the Pakistani military’s message of “no escalation, no increase in tensions desired and no warmongering” was “clear and welcome”.

It added the “leaderships of the two countries do appear to be aware of the dangers of brinkmanship in an overheated political environment”.

The “belated onset of good sense by India and Pakistan’s measured, restrained response throughout suggest that bilateral tensions may soon subside from the present acutely and unacceptably high level”, the editorial said.

It, however, criticised Prime Minister Sharif and his PML-N party for being “virtually invisible at a time of serious” bilateral tensions.

“Being anonymous in a time of crisiswill make it that much harder for the government to bring to bear its influence on foreign policy and national security,” it said.