Pak, India start reducing troops after clashes, says General Mirza

Pakistan and India are close to reducing the troop build up along their border to levels before conflict erupted between the nuclear-armed neighbours this month, a top Pakistani military official told Reuters on Friday, although he warned the crisis had increased the risk of escalation in the future.

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Both sides used fighter jets, missiles, drones and artillery in four days of clashes, their worst fighting in decades, before a ceasefire was announced.

The spark for the latest fighting between the old enemies was an April 29 attack in Indian Kashmir that killed 26 people, most of them tourists. New Delhi blamed the incident on “terrorists” backed by Pakistan, a charge denied by Islamabad.

On May 7, India launched missiles at what it said were “terrorist infrastructure” sites across the border and as Pakistan responded with its own attacks, both countries built up additional forces along the frontier.

General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, Pakistan's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview that the two militaries had started the process of drawing down troop levels.

“We have almost come back to the pre-22nd April situation... we are approaching that, or we must have approached that by now,” said Mirza, the most senior Pakistani military official to speak publicly since the conflict.