India shoots down Pakistani drone: Media

Indian media say the country’s Air Force has shot down a Pakistani drone that had strayed across the common border, stoking fears that bilateral tensions could soar again after a recent high point.

The incident came on Monday, when an Indian Sukhoi-30 warplane downed the pilotless aircraft near the city of Bikaner in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, the reports said, citing unnamed sources.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency said the Air Force had also shot down another intruding Pakistani drone late last month.

On February 14, Indian paramilitary forces on the India-controlled side of Kashmir were hit by a deadly bomb attack orchestrated by Pakistan-based militants.

Tensions between the historical archrivals reached a peak later, when India said it had conducted “preemptive” airstrikes against what it described was a militant training camp in the town of Balakot in western Pakistan.

The countries’ Air Forces then engaged in a dogfight that brought down an Indian warplane.

PressTV-‘Pakistan shoots down Indian warplanes, captures pilots’

Fresh escalations fuel fears of the two nuclear-armed neighbors slipping back into a full-fledged war over disputed Kashmir.

Islamabad returned the aircraft’s captured pilot to India on Friday in, what Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan had called, “a peace gesture."

PressTV-Pakistan returns captured Indian pilot in ‘peace gesture’

Pakistan releases an Indian pilot whom it had captured after shooting down his fighter jet, in “a peace gesture” aimed at deescalating tensions with India.

During the escalation, the two militaries also exchanged fire over the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between the countries. The firefight has killed several people on both sides. On Saturday, Pakistan said it had buried a soldier “with full military honor for defending the motherland."

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