Pakistan's defence minister has said a military incursion by neighbouring India was imminent in the aftermath of a deadly attack on tourists in disputed Kashmir last week, as tensions rise between the two nuclear-armed nations.
"We have reinforced our forces because it is something which is imminent now. So in that situation some strategic decisions have to be taken, so those decisions have been taken," Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told Reuters in an interview at his office in Islamabad.
Asif said India's rhetoric was ramping up and that Pakistan's military had briefed the government on the possibility of an Indian attack. He did not go into further details on his reasons for thinking an incursion was imminent.
India's foreign and defence ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The attack killed 26 people and triggered outrage in Hindu-majority India, along with calls for action against Muslim-majority Pakistan, despite New Delhi offering no proof of Islamabad’s link with the attack.
Pakistan has declared it a "false flag" operation and called for a neutral investigation.
A previously unknown group, 'The Resistance Front', claimed responsibility in a statement, cited by many Indian outlets after the attack.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to pursue and punish the attackers.
Pakistan was on high alert but would only use its nuclear weapons if "there is a direct threat to our existence," said Asif, a veteran politician and outspoken member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, which has historically pursued peace talks with India.
In a separate interview on a Pakistani channel, Asif said: "We should be mentally prepared there is a war looming on the horizon. The possibility is there, a very vivid possibility that we can have war in the next day or two or three or four."
Asif later clarified his statement wasn't a war prediction, but a comment on the crucial days ahead.
"I am close to India and Pakistan. They have had that fight for a 1000 years in Kashmir... Tensions on that border has been for 1500 years," says US President Donald Trump.
'Act of war'
The minister added that Islamabad had approached friendly countries, including Gulf states and China, and also briefed Britain, the United States and others on the situation.
"Some of our friends in the Arabian Gulf have talked to both sides," Asif said, without naming the countries.
China said on Monday it hoped for restraint and welcomed all measures to cool down the situation. Asif said the United States was thus far "staying away" from intervening in the matter.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Moday called for a swift de-escalation.
"We want the escalating tensions between Pakistan and India to be de-escalated as soon as possible, before they evolve into a more serious situation," Erdogan said after a Cabinet meeting in the capital Ankara.
US President Donald Trump last week called Kashmir a 1,500-year-old dispute and said India and Pakistan would figure out relations between themselves, but the State Department later said Washington was in touch with both sides, urging them to work towards a "responsible solution".
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Pakistan has put in abeyance the 1972 Simla Agreement with India, according to which all disputes, including Kashmir, should be resolved bilaterally and peacefully.
Washington has previously helped calm tensions between the two countries, which both gained independence in 1947 when a retreating British colonial administration partitioned the subcontinent into two states.
Delhi and Islamabad have taken a raft of measures against each other since the Kashmir attack. India has suspended the Indus Waters Treaty — an important river-sharing pact.
Pakistan has closed its airspace to Indian airlines and put in abeyance Simla Agreement between the both countries.
Asif said it was an "act of war" to deprive vulnerable areas of water, and that the treaty, which has weathered past conflicts, was backed by international guarantors.
"We have already gone to relevant quarters as far this treaty is concerned," he said, calling on the international community and the World Bank to protect the pact.
