The conflict over the Region of Kashmir between the nuclear powers India and Pakistan coming to a head. Due to armed clashes on the India-Pakistan border, Pakistan closed on Wednesday its entire air space for civilian flights. India blocked nine airports. The United States, China, Russia and other countries demanded that the two neighboring countries to show restraint.
On Tuesday shot down the Pakistani air defenses, according to its own information, two Indian MiG-21 combat aircraft in Pakistani air space to be invaded.
no war
Pakistan have taken a pilot, the other was crashed with his machine on Indian territory. The shooting was an act of self-defence and not an act of war, said a military spokesman in Islamabad. The Indian military said that it had brought a Pakistani plane crash. According to unconfirmed information, there were also artillery fire from both sides.
The tensions escalate, since in Kashmir on may 14. February have killed more than 40 Indian policemen in a suicide bombing. The responsibility for the attack, the Islamist terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which operates out of Pakistan took over. The government in Islamabad denies any connection to the group officially is banned in Pakistan.
On Tuesday India was flown for the first time since the war in 1971, an air attack on Pakistan. The target was a training camp for the terrorists, it said. The majority of Muslims of occupied Kashmir is disputed since the partition of the Indian sub-continent and independence of both States in 1947. As a border, the armistice line of 1949. Separatists in Kashmir call for a detachment from India, which is inhabited by a majority of Hindus.
The warring States have led to three wars, the last in 1999, to an uninhabited Himalayan glaciers. Both countries together have about 300 nuclear warheads, each of which has the destructive power of the Hiroshima dropped the bomb.
Nuclear deterrence
The conflict could further escalate, fears, Christian Wagner, South Asia expert of the Berlin Foundation science and policy, which advises the Federal government and the Bundestag. “The needle to take stitches,” said Wagner on Wednesday to the daily mirror. To be expected further attacks by Islamist terror groups from Pakistan, to India, with air attacks and Pakistan with counter-punches would react. A war is currently unlikely. The nuclear deterrent will stay for both nuclear powers intact. Below this threshold, the conflict köchele, however, says Wagner.