Modi calls Sharif, lends a shoulder

This was their first conversation after they met on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Kathmandu.

After condemning the Peshawar attack on Twitter earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reached out to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday night.

In a telephone conversation which took place soon after Sharif returned to Islamabad from Peshawar, Modi condemned the “brutal terrorist attack”. Modi is learnt to have said that the “savage killing of innocent children in a temple of learning was not only an attack against Pakistan, but an assault against entire humanity”.

This was their first conversation after they met on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Kathmandu.

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“At a time when the world is getting disturbingly accustomed to acts of terror, this terrible tragedy has shaken the conscience of the world,” Modi told Sharif.

He said people of India shared the “heart-rending pain and sorrow” of the bereaved families and stood with them in this hour of grief.

He told Sharif that this moment of “shared pain and mourning is also a call for our two countries and all those who believe in humanity to join hands to decisively defeat terrorism, so that children in Pakistan, India and elsewhere do not have to face a future darkened by the lengthening shadow of terrorism”.

Shubhajit Roy

Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 25 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting on foreign affairs for more than 17 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More

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