text: Fake news prompts Pak Defence Minister to threaten Israel with nuclear strike: report - Mobile Site India TV News
  Fake news prompts Pak Defence Minister to threaten Israel with nuclear strike: report
  Instigated by a fake news report that his Israeli counterpart had threatened "nuclear retaliation" for Islamabad's role in Syria, Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif threatened Israel that his country could use nuclear weapons too.
  India TV News Desk Islamabad December 25, 2016 16:29 IST
  As per a report in the New York Times, a fake news story prompted Pakistan Defence Minister to threaten to go nuclear.
  In a post on Twitter, Mr Asif lashed at Israel after a false report - which the minister apparently believed - that Israel had threatened Pakistan with nuclear weapons.
  "Israeli def min threatens nuclear retaliation presuming pak role in Syria against Daesh," the minister wrote on his official Twitter account, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS. "Israel forgets Pakistan is a Nuclear state too."
  The NYT report said Mr Asif appeared to be reacting to the fake news article published on awdnews.com, which was titled 'Israeli Defense Minister: If Pakistan send ground troops to Syria on any pretext, we will destroy this country with a nuclear attack'.
  The article had appeared on the website on December 20, alongside articles with headlines like 'Clinton is staging a military coup against Trump'.
  The fake story about Israel even misidentified the country's Defence Minister, attributing quotations to a former minister, Moshe Yaalon. Israel's current Minister of Defence is Avigdor Lieberman.
  "The statement attributed to fmr Def Min Yaalon reg Pakistan was never said," the ministry wrote in Twitter post directed at Mr Asif.
  The Israeli ministry added in a second post: "Reports referred to by the Pakistani Def Min are entirely false."