Indian missile strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir
mark dramatic escalation in long-simmering conflict
.jfif)
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India has conducted what it has described as
“precision strikes” in neighbouring Pakistan and
Pakistani-administered Kashmir, days after it blamed
Islamabad for a deadly attack on
the Indian side of the contested region that killed 26 people.
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Twenty-six people, including a child, were
killed in the overnight missile strikes and 46 others have been injured,
according to a Pakistani military spokesperson.
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The Indian government said in a statement that
nine non-military targets had been hit in the
strikes, in what it called “Operation Sindoor.” India
said it struck nine Pakistani “terrorist infrastructure” sites, some of them
linked to the attack by Islamist militants in Indian Kashmir last month.
Pakistan has refuted this, saying none of the targets were militant camps.
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New Delhi said its actions had been
“focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”. It
had displayed “considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of
execution”, it added. The Indian army, in a video on X, said “justice is
served.”
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Both countries also exchanged intense shelling
and heavy gunfire across much of their de facto border in the Himalayan region
of Kashmir, police and witnesses told Reuters. Indian police and medics
have said at least seven civilians were killed and 30 others wounded by
Pakistani firing and shelling overnight.
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Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz
Sharif said the “deceitful enemy has carried out cowardly attacks at five
locations in Pakistan” and that his country would retaliate. “Pakistan
has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India,
and a strong response is indeed being given,” Sharif said.
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Sharif has convened a meeting of the National
Security Committee for Wednesday morning. He said his country
and its forces “know very well how to deal with the enemy. . … We will never
let the enemy succeed in its nefarious objectives.”
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Pakistan says five Indian air force jets were
shot down, a claim not confirmed by India. However, four local government
sources in Indian Kashmir told Reuters that three fighter jets had crashed in
separate areas of the region during the night.
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The United Nations has called for maximum
restraint from both India and Pakistan. “The secretary-general
[António Guterres] is very concerned about the Indian military operations
across the Line of Control and international border. He calls for maximum
military restraint from both countries,” the spokesperson said. “The world
cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan.”
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The development marks a dramatic escalation in
the long-simmering
conflict between the neighbouring nuclear powers.
Bilateral ties between the two countries plummeted after gunmen killed 26
mainly Hindu civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.
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Cross-border exchanges of fire started two
days after that attack at a small meadow near
Pahalgam in Indian-controlled part of the territory, with
gunfire exchanged nightly since 24 April along the de facto border in Kashmir.
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The two sides also announced sweeping
tit-for-tat punitive diplomatic sanctions – including
cancelling visas for each other’s citizens.
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Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, on
Tuesday warned that water from India flowing into neighbouring countries
including Pakistan would be stopped, days after suspending a key
water treaty with Islamabad.
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