China on Monday urged India and Pakistan to “exercise restraint” as the two countries reportedly exchanged fire at the Line of Control (LoC) for a fourth night in a row in the wake of a deadly attack in occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
The April 22 attack killed 26 people, mostly tourists, and was one of the deadliest armed attacks in the disputed Himalayan region since 2000. Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, said it “unequivocally” denied involvement in the attack, after an initial message that claimed responsibility.
India, without offering any evidence, has implied cross-border linkages of the attackers, while Pakistan has strongly denied any involvement. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called for a neutral probe into the incident.
“China hopes that the two sides will exercise restraint, meet each other halfway, properly handle relevant differences through dialogue and consultation and jointly maintain regional peace and stability,” foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said.
“China welcomes all measures that will help cool down the situation,” Jiakun told a regular press briefing.
The statement came after Pakistan and India reportedly exchanged gunfire for a fourth night in a row across the LoC, after four years of relative calm.
“During the night of April 27-28… Pakistan Army posts initiated unprovoked small arms fire across the Line of Control”, the Indian army claimed in a statement.
There were no reported casualties, and Islamabad did not immediately confirm the gunfire.
India’s defence forces have conducted several military exercises across the country since the attack. Some of these are routine preparedness drills, Reuters quoted a defence official as saying.
Since the incident, the nuclear-armed nations have unleashed a raft of measures against each other.
India on April 23 unilaterally suspended the critical Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) — a water-sharing agreement that was brokered by the World Bank and has endured through wars and decades of hostility.
The next day, Pakistan retaliated by threatening to put the Simla Agreement in abeyance and closing its airspace for Indian flights. The National Security Committee (NSC) in Islamabad also called on India to “refrain from its reflexive blame game and cynical, staged managed exploitation of incidents like Pahalgam to further its narrow political agenda”.
On Thursday, Hindu nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to pursue the attackers to the “ends of the earth” and said that those who planned and carried out the attack “will be punished beyond their imagination”.
Calls have also grown from Indian politicians and others for military action against Pakistan.
Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Friday said Pakistan was “ready to cooperate” in an international probe into the Pahalgam attack, but also warned of an “all-out war” if India carried out any attack on Pakistan.
The United Nations has urged the arch-rivals to show “maximum restraint” so that issues can be “resolved peacefully through meaningful mutual engagement”.
US in touch with India and Pakistan, urges work toward ‘responsible solution’
China’s call for restraint added to the United States’ statement from Sunday, urging India and Pakistan to work towards what it called a “responsible solution”, as Washington said it was in touch with both countries.
“This is an evolving situation and we are monitoring developments closely. We have been in touch with the governments of India and Pakistan at multiple levels,” a US State Department spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement.
“The United States encourages all parties to work together towards a responsible resolution,” the spokesperson added.
The State Department spokesperson also said Washington “stands with India and strongly condemns the terrorist attack in Pahalgam”, reiterating comments similar to recent ones made by US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
In public, the US government has expressed support for India after the attack but has not criticised Pakistan. While Saudi Arabia and Iran have offered to mediate, Trump last week said he was confident that India and Pakistan would “get it figured out”.
India is an increasingly important US partner as Washington aims to counter China’s rising influence in Asia while Pakistan remains a US ally, even as its importance for Washington has diminished after the 2021 US withdrawal from neighbouring Afghanistan.
Michael Kugelman, a Washington-based South Asia analyst and writer for the Foreign Policy magazine, said India is now a much closer US partner than Pakistan.
“This may worry Islamabad that if India retaliates militarily, the US may sympathise with its counterterrorism imperatives and not try to stand in the way,” Kugelman told Reuters.
Kugelman also said that given Washington’s involvement and ongoing diplomatic efforts in Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, the Trump administration is “dealing with a lot on its global plate” and may leave India and Pakistan on their own, at least in the early days of the tensions.
Hussain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador to the US and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute think tank, also said that there seemed to be no US appetite to calm the situation at this moment.
“India has a longstanding grievance about terrorism emanating or supported from across [the] border. Pakistan has a longstanding belief that India wants to dismember it. Both work themselves into a frenzy every few years. This time, there is no US interest in calming things down,” Haqqani said.
Ned Price, a former US State Department official under the administration of former president Joe Biden, said that while the Trump administration was giving this issue the sensitivity it deserved, a perception that it would back India at any cost may escalate tensions further.
“The Trump administration has made clear it wishes to deepen the US-India partnership a laudable goal but that it is willing to do so at almost any cost.
“If India feels that the Trump administration will back it to the hilt no matter what, we could be in store for more escalation and more violence between these nuclear-armed neighbours,” Price added.
2,000 detained as Indian forces continue crackdown
Meanwhile, Indian soldiers have blown up nine homes of pro-freedom Kashmiris and detained nearly 2,000 people since the Pahalgam attack, sparking public anger and accusations of “collective punishment”.
Police have launched a vast manhunt and detained a long list of suspects for questioning, including nearly 2,000 residents across the territory, a senior police official told AFP.
“It’s a revolving door in police stations as part of the ongoing investigation,” the officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.
“Some have already been let go, and more are being summoned to police stations,” the officer added. “These are not arrests, just for seeking information that could lead to the terrorists,” the official insisted.
Security forces have searched nearly 1,000 houses and forests hunting for the attackers in India-held Kashmir, a local police official told Reuters on Monday.
Political leaders in the state have called for caution to ensure the innocent are not harmed in the government’s actions against terrorism.
“It’s time to … avoid any misplaced action that alienates people. Punish the guilty, show them no mercy but don’t let innocent people become collateral damage,” Omar Abdullah, the territory’s chief minister said on X on Saturday.
Another former chief minister made an appeal to the Indian government “to take care that innocent people are not made to feel the brunt as alienation aids terrorists’ goals of division and fear”.
Aga Ruhullah, a federal lawmaker from occupied Kashmir, said: “Kashmir and Kashmiris are being given a collective punishment”.
