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AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary
World News

Pakistani bishop appeals against risk of Pakistan-India war

Bishop Samson Shukardin of Hyderabad was speaking following an escalation of tensions between the two nuclear-armed countries.

Pakistan's civil aviation authority has shut its airspace to all commercial flights and the country's military said it had shot down two Indian warplanes and captured one of the pilots in Kashmir.

Kashmir is a Muslim-majority region at the heart of decades of hostility between India and Pakistan. The neighbours both rule parts of the region while claiming the entire territory as theirs.

The Indian government claimed it carried out air raids against an Islamist militant training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammed, killing 'a very large number' of fighters.

The airstrike near the town of Balakot, some 50 kilometres from the Indo-Pakistani border was the deepest cross-border raid launched by India since the last of its three wars with Pakistan in 1971.

Tensions between the south-Asian neighbours have escalated dramatically since a suicide car bomb attack on 14th February that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary police in Kashmir.

The Pakistan-based Islamist Jaish group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Bishop Shukardin told Vatican News: "We condemn the terrorist attacks in Kashmir, but also any armed reaction: we ask God to change the hearts of men to stop any act that may lead to war

"Let us pray for the victims and pray for peace between India and Pakistan".

India accuses Pakistan of allowing militant groups to operate on its territory and says Pakistani security agencies played a role in the attack on the Indian paramilitary police.

Pakistan denies it provides a safe haven to militants.

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