Pakistan tests ballistic missile
Pakistan has test-fired a medium-range ballistic missile in its latest show of military strength.
The Pakistani military said the second test of Shaheen-1 concluded its latest series of missile tests.
“Pakistan today carried out another successful test fire of its indigenously developed medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic Hatf-IV/Shaheen-1,” a military statement said on Tuesday.
It was the second such test in less than a week.
Indian superiority
Islamabad, wary of the superiority of its rival India in conventional weapons, carried out the first test of nuclear-capable Shaheen-1 last Wednesday.
The missile has a range of up to 700km and can carry all “kinds of warheads”, the military said.
Earlier this month, Pakistan tested a short-range Hatf-III Ghaznavi missile that New Delhi dismissed as nothing special.
“A longer range version of the Hatf series will be tested in the future as soon as technical parameters need to be validated,” the military added.
Missile tests
Pakistan and India engaged in what were seen as a tit-for-tat missile tests last March, when Islamabad tested the short-range Abdali (Hatf-II) missile.
India test-fired the nuclear-capable Prithvi missile in April and then a short-range, surface-to-surface missile in June.
Tensions between the two-nuclear armed neighbours have eased somewhat this year after they came close to a fourth war in 2002, over a popular Muslim insurgency in divided Kashmir.
But there has been little progress towards peace talks, partly because of renewed violence in the disputed region.