A timely intervention by the Trump administration prevented a potential nuclear war between India and Pakistan after the 2019 airstrikes, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has claimed in his new book.

In his book, “Never Give an Inch”, a memoir of his time as a top diplomat in Donald Trump regime and earlier as the CIA chief, Pompeo writes that the world doesn’t properly know how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear war in February 2019.

The Indian Air Force on February 26, 2019 launched targeted airstrikes inside Pakistan targeting terrorist training camps of terror outfit of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in Balakot region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

India’s response came after 41 CRPF men were killed in a suicide bombing in Kashmir’s Pulwama on February 14, 2019.

India shot down an F-16 during an aerial combat in which an Indian warplane was shot down by Pakistan and the pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, was captured.

Pompeo, seen by many as a potential future presidential contender, reveals that he was in Hanoi for a summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, when he woke up to an urgent call from a senior Indian official.

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The official told Pompeo that he believed that Pakistan was prepping their nuclear weapons for a strike and India was preparing its own response.

Pompeo says he told the official to give the US time to sort things out and eventually US diplomats managed to convince the arch rivals that neither of them was going for the nuclear option, thus deescalating the situation.

The former Trump diplomat in his book says he believes that Pakistan “probably enabled” the Kashmir attack. Pompeo says he spoke to the Pakistan’s “actual leader” then army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, alluding to the weakness of civilian governments in the country.

Pompeo says that no other nation could have done what the US did that night to avoid “a horrible outcome.”

Pompeo had publicly defended India’s right to act during his stint as US secretary of state.

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India has reportedly invited Pakistan foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and the Chief Justice of Pakistan, Umar Ata Bandial, to attend in the foreign ministers’ and chief justices’ meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

As per reports, India, who was appointed to chair the regional grouping in September 2022, has sent the invitations to Bhutto and Bandial through the Indian High Commission in Islamabad.

The invites come as a surprise to many as bilateral ties between the two subcontinental neighbors are going through a rough patch in recent times.

India is set to host key ministerial meeting summit in Goa in the first week of May of the nine-member Asian grouping which also consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and its new member Iran, which will attend its first SCO meeting as a full member.

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The last meeting of the SCO was held in Samarkand in Uzbekistan.

Pakistan has yet to respond to the invite and if Bilawal Bhutto accepts, it will be the first such visit from a Pakistani foreign minister in nearly a decade since Hina Rabbani Khar paid a visit to India in 2011.

India-Pakistan ties have been at an all-time low since 2019 when the Centre abolished Article 370 which formerly bestowed special status upon the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Islamabad is seeking its restoration and considers the Kashmir issue, a burning point between the two nations.

Making matters worse, last month, Bilawal Bhutto sparked a row when he called PM Modi the “butcher of Gujarat”.

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A mass shooting incident took place in California, USA on Sunday. Many people are feared dead. According to reports, the firing took place in the Monterey Park area at 3:30 am during the Chinese New Year celebrations. Some reports say that at least 10 people have died and 19 are injured. However, the police have not released any information about this till now.

It has been told on some social media accounts that this matter is related to apartheid. Violence broke out between the local people and the Asian community. A 17-year-old youth of Chinese origin has also been killed in this. Police can issue a statement in this regard in some time.

Firing not detected due to loud music

A report in Sky News quoting the local authorities say that at the time of the incident, very loud music was playing, so for a long time it was not understood whether fireworks were being burst or was it firing. The true picture was painted after injured people were seen running.

Thousands of people present during event

According to police reports, several thousand people were present at the time of the incident. Therefore the death toll may increase. A two-day festival was going on here. Even before this, there violence had instigated between the local white people and the Asian community in this area. Last year, 5 people were killed in a similar incident.

Sudden firing at midnight

According to media reports – the death toll can increase very fast. The reason for this is that the voice of the injured was drowned in the noise of the music and due to this they could not get treatment for a long time. Apart from this, around 10,000 people were present there even at midnight. In such a situation, the ambulance found it difficult to reach there.

This place is a suburban area just 10 kilometers away from Los Angeles. According to the police, the attackers also opened fire after entering the house of a Chinese couple. The footage of this house has also come to the fore. An eyewitness said- The enmity of the attackers was not with the people present there, but with a Chinese couple and because of this so many people were killed.