Five jets shot down during India-Pakistan conflict, claims U.S. President Donald Trump

The Hindu

19-07-2025

In a fresh claim, U.S. President Donald Trump said "five jets were shot down" during the conflict between India and Pakistan in May and repeated his assertion that the fighting ended following his intervention.
The U.S. President did not specify whether the jets were lost by either of the two countries or whether he was referring to combined losses by both sides.
In virtually rejecting Mr. Trump's claim of ending the conflict, New Delhi has been maintaining that the two sides halted their military actions following direct talks between their militaries without any mediation by the U.S.
Speaking at the White House during a dinner he hosted for Republican senators on Friday (July 18, 2025), Mr.Trump said: "You had India, Pakistan, that was going… in fact, planes were being shot out of the air...four or five. But I think five jets were shot down actually…that was getting worse and worse, wasn't it? "That was looking like it was going to go, these are two serious nuclear countries, and they were hitting each other," he said.
'But India and Pakistan were going at it, and they were back and forth, and it was getting bigger and bigger. And we got it solved through trade. We said 'You guys want to make a trade deal. We're not making a trade deal if you're going to be throwing around weapons and maybe nuclear weapons. Both very powerful nuclear states,' Mr. Trump said.
He said his administration achieved more in six months than almost any other administration could accomplish in eight years.
"Something I'm very proud of, we stopped a lot of wars, a lot of wars. And these were serious wars,' Mr. Trump said.
Since May 10, Mr. Trump has repeated his claim several times on various occasions that he 'helped settle' the tensions between India and Pakistan and that he told the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours that America will do a 'lot of trade' with them if they stopped the conflict.
India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terrorist infrastructure in territories controlled by Pakistan in response to the Pahalgam terror attack.
The Resistance Front (TRF), a front for Pakistan-based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), had claimed responsibility.
The strikes triggered four days of intense clashes that ended with an understanding on stopping the military actions on May 10.
The U.S. on Thursday (July 17, 2025) designated The Resistance Front as a foreign terrorist organisation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the Department of State is adding The Resistance Front (TRF) as a designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).
India welcomed the U.S. decision to designate TRF as a designated FTO and SDGT.