New York July 19: In a fresh claim, US 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 US 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 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 US.

Speaking at the White House during a dinner he hosted for Republican senators on Friday, 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,” 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,” Trump said.

Since May 10, 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 US on Thursday 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 US decision to designate TRF as a designated FTO and SDGT.

United Nations, July 19: The daily onslaught of hostilities, preventable deaths, a worsening fuel shortage, displacement and desperation are normalising mass deprivation for Gazans, UN humanitarians said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the Israeli authorities issued yet another displacement order, this time for parts of northern Gaza. There are also deeply troubling reports of malnourished children and adults in hospitals with few resources to treat them, Xinhua news agency reported.

OCHA said that the energy crisis continues to deepen despite the resumption of limited fuel imports, and its depletion has forced a pause in solid waste collection over the past couple of days, and more water wells have been shut down, mainly in Deir al-Balah.

Specific health services like dialysis have been reduced or shut down, and others will have to end too, due to fuel shortages, while the limited fuel available is being allocated primarily to health, water and telecommunications services, as well as to powering vehicles, it said.

Humanitarian movements inside Gaza continue to be restricted, since only seven out of 13 attempts to coordinate aid workers and supplies movement with the Israeli authorities were facilitated, allowing humanitarian teams to retrieve fuel, collect water, relocate generators, provide supplies related to hygiene and sanitation, and transfer much-needed medical supplies, OCHA said.