'Seven brand new, beautiful planes' shot down during Pakistan-India conflict: Trump

ISLAMABAD:  US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that “seven brand new, beautiful planes were shot down” during the Pakistan-India conflict earlier this year.

While referring to the aerial encounters between the two countries, the US president said the two countries were “going at it” in May during which “seven planes were shot down.”

Last month, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told the United Nations General Assembly that Pakistani forces had turned seven Indian aircraft into “scrap and dust.” The Indian military has also claimed that it shot down five Pakistani fighter jets, a statement dismissed by Defense Minister Khawaja Asif on X, who termed the claim “comical.”

 “Seven brand new, beautiful planes were shot down,” Trump said while speaking to business leaders in Japan during a dinner.  

The US president said that he conveyed it to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that “we're not going to do any trade if you're going to be fighting.”

The same message was also sent to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — whom he termed “a very nice man, a very good man” — and Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir.

“And within about 24 hours, that was the end of that,” Trump said. “It was amazing, actually.”

“A lot of the wars that I stopped were because of tariffs,” he said, adding that he was able to do a “great service to the world […] because of tariffs, because of trade.”  

The US president has in recent weeks also criticized India for continuing to purchase Russian oil, and his administration has imposed tariffs on Indian exports to pressure New Delhi to support efforts for peace in Ukraine.