New Delhi: India tore into Pakistan at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Tuesday, condemning the ‘aerial strikes’ carried out by its neighbour in its own Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that killed 24 people including 10 civilians.
Indian diplomat Kshitij Tyagi said Pakistan should prioritise its internal crises rather than targeting India.
“A delegation that epitomises the antithesis of this approach continues to abuse this forum with baseless and provocative statements against India,” said Tyagi, who is a counsellor at India’s Permanent Mission in Geneva.
“Instead of coveting our territory, they would do well to vacate the Indian territory under their illegal occupation and focus on rescuing an economy on life support, a polity muzzled by military dominance, and a human rights record stained by persecution, perhaps once they find time away from exporting terrorism, harbouring UN-proscribed terrorists, and bombing their own people,” Tyagi added.
The overnight bombing on a remote village in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Monday was carried out by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF). The Tirah Valley has long been home to insurgent and militant groups, including the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), Lashkar-e-Islam and small al-Qaeda-linked cells.
There has been no official response yet by the Pakistan air force and government on what their intended target was. According to a report in Pakistani daily Dawn, Ali Amin Gandapur, the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said it is a constitutional right of the military to deploy fighter jets against terrorists, and there was nothing the provincial government could have done to stop it.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the incident and called for an independent probe into the matter.