Journalism of Courage
Following a terrorist attack in Islamabad where at least 12 people were killed and 36 were injured, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warned that the country could carry out strikes inside Afghanistan. He said Pakistan was targeted with terrorist attacks in Islamabad and South Waziristan by Afghanistan and slammed the Taliban administration for allegedly sheltering the militants behind the violence, Geo TV reported.
Pakistan witnessed two major attacks in the past two days: One of them targeting Cadet College Wana in South Waziristan and the second one, where a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside a court complex in Islamabad on Tuesday. The incident occurred as international events were being hosted in the federal capital, including the Inter-Parliamentary Speakers’ Conference and the 6th Margalla Dialogue.
Interacting with Geo TV during a programme on Tuesday, Khawaja Asif said that following the two terror attacks in the country, cross-border action inside Afghanistan cannot be “ruled out”. The minister rejected Afghanistan’s condemnation of the attacks and stated that such expressions could not “be taken as proof of sincerity.” “Those sheltered by the Afghan Taliban are repeatedly attacking us,” the Defence Minister added.
Training his gun at India and Afghanistan, Asif said any misadventure by the two countries would be “paid back in the same coin by Pakistan”. “Pakistan will never initiate any military adventure. We will not let any act of aggression go unanswered; we will respond forcefully,” he was quoted as saying by Geo TV.
Earlier in a post on X, Asif had warned that the dual attack in the country should act as a “wake up call” for those who believed the war was confined to Pakistan’s remote borderlands.
“We are in a state of war. Anyone who thinks that the Pakistan Army is fighting this war only in the border areas along Afghanistan or in the remote regions of Balochistan should take the suicide attack in Islamabad as a wake-up call,” Asif wrote.
