Pakistan's military is preparing to defend against any attack by India, and would respond with "full force", the army's spokesman said on Friday, amid heightened tensions between the two neighbours.

"We have no intention to initiate war, but we will respond with full force to full spectrum threat, that would surprise you," Major General Asif Ghafoor said. "Don't mess with Pakistan."

"We do not wish to go to war. If it is imposed on us, we have the right to respond," he told a news conference in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, a week after Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Pakistani-based terrorist group, claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack that killed 40 men of the Central Reserve Police Force in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir.