Pak-based militants plan to attack India: US

Director of National Intelligence of the United States, Daniel Coats has told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats that Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan and these (terrorist) groups “will present a sustained threat to the United States’s interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.”

The intelligence community assesses that in South Asia, the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners.

“Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean,” Coats testified before the committee.

Meanwhile, Pakistani troops violated the ceasefire on Friday by firing mortars along the International Border in Jammu district, leaving a BSF jawan injured. BSF troops posted along the border retaliated.

This is second ceasefire violation along the Indo-Pak border in Jammu and Kashmir in as many days.

Pakistani troops had on Thursday, shelled civilian areas near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, killing a woman and injuring her husband and provoking retaliation by the Indian army in which two Pakistani soldiers were injured.

In the wake of the Pakistani action in Naushera tehsil of Rajouri district, the schools in the area were closed down and an evacuation plan was activated under which over 1200 people from various border hamlets are being shifted to safer places.