IAF air strikes impact: Pakistan stock market plunges 785 points

The intensity of India's multiple air strikes, deep inside Pakistan, was felt across the country. The impact was seen in Pakistan stock market too which plunged below 39,000 points for the first time in the last 32 sessions on Tuesday.

According to Dawn, Karachi Stock Market-100 index which opened weak with a loss of 184 points in the first half hour plummet 785.12 points to close at 38,821.67.

It was the largest decrease in the last 55 trading days.

In addition to the non-military pre-emptive strikes by India, the following remarks by Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi had only created uncertainty and fear among the investors.

"The foreign minister's comment that Pakistan will respond to India's act of aggression at times and place of its choosing has put the market and investors in a state of uncertainty and fear, which might take some time to recede," the website quoted an anonymous trader as saying.

Double-bind Pakistan, which first denied any attack on its soil by Indian Air Force and then vowed to give a response to India, hurled several meetings involving top military and government officials immediately after the attacks.

Today also, the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will hold a meeting with National Command Authority (NCA), a body that oversees Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

Sending out a huge message, India on Tuesday carried out air strikes deep inside Pakistan, destroying a major camp of JeM and eliminating a "large number" of terrorists, including top commanders, of the terror group which attacked a CRPF convoy in Pulwama 12 days back.

According to the Al Jazeera, the strike was the deepest cross border attack launched by India since the last of its three wars with Pakistan in 1971.

India launched an operation at around 3.30 am and completed within minutes, 12 Mirage-2000 fighter jets pounded the training centre, housing around 300 terrorists, in Balakot area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province with six bombs while SU-30 combat aircraft maintained air superiority to ward off any retaliation by the Pakistan Air Force, sources said.

The camp, located in a forest area atop a hill, was headed by JeM chief Masood Azhar's brother-in-law Yusuf Azhar alias Ustad Gauri, who was involved in the 1999 hijack of Indian Airlines plane IC-814 and was on Interpol lookout notice since 2000.

The casualty figure of the terrorists is very high as the JeM had shifted its entire cadre to this camp from the launching pads along the Line of Control (LoC), fearing surgical strike-type response from India in the aftermath of Pulwama attack, sources said about first such action by India.

A large number of Jaish terrorists, including top commanders, trainers and those terrorists who were to be the 'fidayeen' (suicide attackers) were eliminated in the "non-military" air strike, India's Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told the media while officially disclosing information about the air strike, hours after the action.

Gokhale said the "pre-emptive" strike by India had become absolutely necessary as there was credible information that JeM, which recently carried out the terror attack in Pulwama, was planning further attacks in this country.