Pakistan vows retaliation over India’s strikes
India has hit Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir with missiles and Pakistan says it shot down five Indian aircraft and is vowing to retaliate, in the worst fighting in more than two decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
India said it struck nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites on Wednesday, some of them linked to an attack by Islamist militants on Hindu tourists that killed 26 people in Indian Kashmir last month.
Pakistan said at least 26 people had been killed on Wednesday and India “had ignited an inferno in the region”.
Islamabad pledged to respond “at a time, place and manner of its choosing to avenge the loss of innocent Pakistani lives and blatant violation of its sovereignty”.
A government security committee said Islamabad emphatically rejected Indian allegations of the presence of terrorist camps on its territory.
The Indian strikes included targets in Punjab, its first attacks on Pakistan’s most populous province since the last full-scale war between the old enemies more than half a century ago, triggering fears of further hostilities in one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints.
“The targets we had set were destroyed with exactness according to a well-planned strategy,” Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said.
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“We have shown sensitivity by ensuring that no civilian population was affected in the slightest.”
Islamabad said none of the six locations targeted in Pakistan were militant camps.
At least 26 civilians were killed and 46 wounded, a Pakistan military spokesperson said.
Indian TV channels showed videos of explosions, fire, large plumes of smoke in the night sky and people fleeing in several places in Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir.
In Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, damage from an Indian strike was visible at sunrise.
Security forces surrounded a small mosque in a hillside residential neighbourhood that had been hit, with its minaret collapsed.
Later in the day, funerals were held for several of those killed.
Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both sides claim in full and control in part.
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The Pakistan prime minister’s office said five Indian fighter jets and drones had been shot down, although this was not confirmed by India.
Local government sources in Indian Kashmir told Reuters that three fighter jets had crashed in separate areas of the Himalayan region during the night and their pilots had been hospitalised.
Indian defence ministry officials were not immediately available to confirm the report.
Images circulating on local media showed a large, damaged cylindrical chunk of metal lying in a field at one of the crash sites.
Indian forces attacked facilities linked to Islamist militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, two Indian military spokespeople told a briefing in New Delhi, in what New Delhi called Operation Sindoor.
India had earlier said two of three suspects in the tourist attack were Pakistani nationals, without detailing any evidence.
Pakistan has denied any links to the attack and called for an independent investigation.
The strikes used precision weapons to target “terrorist camps” that served as recruitment and indoctrination centres, and housed weapons and training facilities, the military spokespeople said.
Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri, the top official in its external affairs ministry, told the briefing that the strikes were to pre-empt further attacks on India.
The neighbours also exchanged intense shelling and heavy gunfire across their de facto border in Kashmir.
The shelling killed 15 civilians and wounded 43 in the Indian part of the region, and at least six people were killed on the Pakistani side, officials said.
The scale of the strikes went far beyond New Delhi’s response to previous attacks in Kashmir it has blamed on Pakistan, including in 2019 and 2016, which some analysts said meant the risk of escalation was higher.
US President Donald Trump called the fighting “a shame” and added, “I hope it ends quickly.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for maximum military restraint from both countries, a spokesperson said.
China, which neighbours both India and Pakistan, and Russia also called for restraint.
