India said it struck nine Pakistani “terrorist infrastructure” sites, some of them linked to an attack by Islamist militants on Hindu tourists that killed 26 people in Indian Kashmir last month. Islamabad said six Pakistani locations were targeted, and that none of them were militant camps. Eight people killed, it said.
“India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution,“ the Indian defence ministry said in a statement.
However, four local government sources in Indian Kashmir told Reuters that three fighter jets had crashed in separate areas of the Himalayan region during the night.
Images circulating on local media showed a large, damaged cylindrical chunk of silver-coloured metal lying in a field at one of the crash sites. Reuters could not immediately verify the authenticity of the image.
Islamabad called the assault a “blatant act of war” and said it had informed the U.N. Security Council that Pakistan reserved the right to respond appropriately to Indian aggression.
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.
But analysts said the risk of escalation is higher than in the recent past due to the severity of India's attack, which New Delhi called “Operation Sindoor”. Sindoor is the Hindi language word for vermilion, a red powder that Hindu women put on the forehead or parting of their hair as a sign of marriage.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for maximum military restraint from both countries, a spokesperson said.
A Pakistani military spokesperson said eight people had been killed in the Indian strikes, 35 were injured and two were missing.
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. Reuters could not independently verify the footage.
All schools in Pakistani Kashmir, the national capital Islamabad, and much of Indian Kashmir and the populous Pakistani province of Punjab were ordered closed on Wednesday in the aftermath of the strikes.
Shaheen said.
A Pakistani military spokesperson told broadcaster Geo that two mosques were among the sites hit by India. The Pakistani defence minister told Geo that all the sites were civilian and not militant camps.
After India's strikes, the Indian army said in a post on X on Wednesday: “Justice is served.”
A spokesperson for the Indian Embassy in Washington told Reuters that evidence pointed “towards the clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists in this terror attack,“ referring to the April tourist killings.
News of the strikes impacted Indian stock futures mildly, with the GIFT NIFTY at 24,311, 0.3% below the NIFTY 50's last close of 24,379.6 on Tuesday.
The Indian strike goes far beyond New Delhi's response to previous attacks in Kashmir blamed on Pakistan. Those include India's 2019 air strike on Pakistan after 40 Indian paramilitary police were killed in Kashmir and India's retaliation for the deaths of 18 soldiers in 2016.
“All eyes will be on India's next move. We’ve had a strike and a counter-strike, and what comes next will be the strongest indication of just how serious a crisis this could become,“ he said.
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