ASIATODAY.ID, WASHINGTON – India and Pakistan have agreed to cease hostilities, US President Donald Trump has said, adding that a deal was reached following a “long night of talks” mediated by Washington.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has confirmed that a deal was reached but did not mention US involvement. New Delhi has said the truce came into effect at 5 pm local time.
“I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Saturday. He also hailed both sides for demonstrating “common sense and great intelligence.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said that the two neighbors had decided to “start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.” According to Rubio, he and US Vice President J.D. Vance were involved in talks with senior Indian and Pakistani officials over the past 48 hours, including Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif, India’s top diplomat, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and Pakistani Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir.
Shortly after the announcement, India’s Foreign Ministry said that the heads of military operations of the two nations had agreed to cease all hostilities in a phone call earlier on Saturday initiated by the Pakistani side. Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar took to X to say that “Pakistan and India have agreed to a ceasefire with immediate effect.”
The truce follows a brief but rapid military escalation between the two nuclear powers. Earlier this week, New Delhi launched ‘Operation Sindoor’, a series of strikes on suspected terrorist facilities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The strikes were in retaliation for a terrorist attack in April in the India Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir that claimed the lives of 26 civilians.
The attack was initially claimed by “The Resistance Front”, a group believed to be linked to the Pakistani-based jihadist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. New Delhi said its investigators had been able to identify communication nodes of terrorists in and to Pakistan. Islamabad has vehemently denied that it had any role in the attack and has called for an impartial probe.
Islamabad has condemned India’s actions as a “heinous provocation” and responded with shelling across the Line of Control, the de facto border between the countries in Kashmir, as well as with drone strikes. Late on Friday, Pakistan announced that it had launched a large-scale military operation against India called ‘Bunyan Al Marsoos’ (Unbreakable Wall) in what it called retaliation for the Indian strikes. Strikes targeting Indian military sites ensued. (RT)
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