Pakistani soldiers take security measures as the people panic during blackout after India launches strikes on Pakistan, in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. Photo / Getty Images
Pakistani soldiers take security measures as the people panic during blackout after India launches strikes on Pakistan, in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. Photo / Getty Images
India and Pakistan are on the brink of conflict after India’s strikes in Pakistan.
Pakistan reported 21 deaths, claiming Indian warplanes were downed; India targeted militants in retaliation.
The US and China called for mediation, urging both nations to de-escalate tensions.
India and Pakistan are on the brink of direct conflict for the first time since 2019, after India launched its deepest and deadliest strikes inside Pakistan in decades and Islamabad claimed to have downed several Indian warplanes.
Pakistan’s Government said 21 people were killed in the strikes, including two children; India said it avoided Pakistani military and civilian targets and that the operation was aimed at militants in retaliation for last month’s rampage by gunmen in a popular tourist area in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir. India linked the April 22 attack to Pakistan; Islamabad denied any involvement and has appealed for an international investigation.
The overnight attack has rattled Pakistan, a nation of more than 240 million people, which had braced for Indian military action for weeks but had not anticipated the strikes would reach its heartland. At least 16 of the victims were killed in Pakistan’s Punjab, the country’s most populous and wealthiest province. It was the first such Indian attack on Punjab in more than half a century.
While the overnight strikes had echoes of a confrontation between the nuclear-armed powers six years ago, Wednesday’s aerial assault was much more expansive, and its potential consequences more far-reaching. In 2019, after a similar militant attack in Kashmir, India responded with a single strike in a remote part of Pakistan. After the latest barrage, the countries traded rhetorical blows, with each trying to own the narrative.
“The operation was launched to provide justice to the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks and their families,” Indian Colonel Sophia Qureshi said at a media briefing. “The operation targeted nine terrorist camps, and we fully destroyed them.”
Pakistan claims five warplanes shot down
Pakistan characterised the attacks as a “cowardly” strike on civilians – and on the nation itself.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a televised address to Parliament that the military had shot down five Indian warplanes, including three French-made Rafales, and officials released a video showing smoke rising from an apparent crash site. Sharif said Pakistani planes never entered Indian territory and only shot down the aircraft after they had “delivered their payload”. The claims could not be independently verified and the Indian Government did not respond to questions about its alleged losses.
“We were ready to pounce on the enemy’s planes and throw them in the sea,” Sharif told Pakistan’s Parliament on Wednesday evening. “The enemy knows about our capabilities,” he continued, appealing for national unity.
As night fell in Islamabad, the most pressing question was whether – and how – the country would respond. The United States and China – Pakistan’s most powerful backers – called for mediation on Wednesday, but it was unclear who would take the lead on diplomatic efforts, or whether the two countries were ready to engage.
A flare goes up over a town in Poonch district after India carried out "precision strikes at terrorist camps" inside Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Photo / AFP
24 impacts
Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told Bloomberg TV that he was “not aware” of any contact between his country and India at the moment. He also hinted, however, that Pakistan might be willing to de-escalate. “If India backs down, we will definitely wrap up these things,” he said.
After Wednesday strikes, Pakistan’s military reported 24 “impacts” in Ahmedpur East, Muridke and Sialkot in Punjab; and Kotli, Bagh and Muzaffarabad in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
After a meeting of Pakistan’s national security council, military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said the armed forces had been given “full authority ... to respond at a time, place and manner of their choosing”. He warned that “a full account will be taken for every last drop of innocent civilians’ unjustly spilled blood”.
“People in Punjab now want to go fight the Indians,” said Syed Ahsan Raza, a shopkeeper in Ahmedpur East, where Pakistani officials said at least 13 people were killed overnight. Raza said his walls shook when the first strike hit. “People are still in a state of shock and disbelief,” he said.
Peace since 2021
India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars over Kashmir – a Muslim-majority territory administered in part by both nations and claimed by both in its entirety – but the region had been relatively quiet since a ceasefire brokered in 2021. Two years earlier, India revoked Kashmir’s semiautonomous status and launched an extensive security crackdown on militant groups. Tourism began to flourish again, drawing visitors from across India, but it came at a cost, according to rights groups, which documented arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings by Indian forces.
The tenuous calm was shattered on April 22, when gunmen emerged from the forest and opened fire on tourists in a popular meadow, in an area known locally as “mini Switzerland”. Twenty-six people were killed – 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen – making it the deadliest assault on Indian civilians since the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which was carried out by the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT.
Evidence of militants
In a media briefing, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said India had found evidence linking the militants in Pahalgam to Pakistan, but did not make the evidence public. He blamed the attack on the Resistance Front, which India says is an offshoot of LeT, citing social media posts by the group and affiliated accounts. The group has denied responsibility for the attack.
Misri said further attacks against India were forthcoming, according to government intelligence, and that New Delhi’s response was aimed at deterrence. He did not respond to questions about whether any Indian aircraft had been shot down by Pakistan.
India’s embassy in Beijing, however, weighed in on the controversy, responding to a report about the downed planes in Chinese media with a post on X. “We would recommend you verify your facts and cross-examine your sources before pushing out this kind of dis-information,” the embassy wrote.
There was also violence on Wednesday along the Line of Control separating Indian-administered and Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Medical officer Nusrat Bhatti said at least 12 people were killed in cross-border shelling in the town of Poonch on the Indian side, with others seriously injured. A school and a gurudwara, or Sikh house of worship, were both hit, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, and the military said late Wednesday that an Indian soldier had also been killed. Pakistani officials said five civilians were killed by Indian artillery fire on its side of the disputed border, bringing the total Pakistani toll to 26.
“I have never witnessed such an exchange of fire in Poonch,” said lawyer Sajid Bukhari, who awoke to loud explosions early Wednesday morning (local time). Sheltered on their ground floor, his family watched the exchange of shells targeting outposts high in the Himalayan hills. When they fled in the morning, he said, his town looked like a “war zone”.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst, said “the escalation risks are already much higher than they were at any point during the 2019 crisis”. This time, he added, “it’ll be more difficult … to look for off-ramps”.
‘Heartland of the country’
Asfandyar Mir, another South Asia analyst, said the risk that the current fighting could spiral out of control has been heightened by India’s choice of targets in Punjab, including several mosques, according to Pakistani officials.
“It’s the heartland of the country: the cultural, sociopolitical heartland. It’s where the military is from and where much of the state apparatus draws from,” Mir said.
“The last time the Indians struck in Punjab was in the 1971 war,” he said, years before either nation became a nuclear power. (That war occurred when India’s military became involved in a civil war in East Pakistan, which eventually became the independent nation of Bangladesh.)
“The Pakistani leadership will feel like they have legitimate grounds to respond to India in a fairly big manner,” Mir said, “to prevent India from ever attempting something like this again.” Pakistan’s options may range from limited airstrikes to a ground incursion, he added.
Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University and a former Indian military officer, said Pakistan’s response will dictate the direction of the conflict.
“If they go and hit inside Indian Punjab, or India’s Rajasthan province,” Singh said, referencing two Indian states that border Pakistan, “then it would be absolutely insane. Then we are looking at a different scale.”
Travellers warned
Several airlines warned travellers Wednesday that their flights between Asia and Europe were being rerouted to avoid Pakistani airspace and might face delays. Operations at several airports in northern India were also suspended until further notice, affected airlines said, and numerous flights to and from Pakistan were cancelled.
The US Embassy in Pakistan reiterated in a security alert that the State Department has a “Reconsider Travel” advisory for Pakistan generally and advised “US citizens to depart areas of active conflict if they can safely do so, or to shelter in place”.
“It’s so terrible,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday when asked about the conflict. “They’ve gone tit for tat, so hopefully they can stop now,” he added, “and if I can do anything to help, I will be there”.
As countries around the world called for de-escalation, India and Pakistan sought to shore up support from allies. China called the attacks “regrettable” and urged both sides to “remain calm”.
Kugelman, the South Asia analyst, said “it might fall to external mediation to try to help the two sides focus on de-escalation” – efforts that could be led by the United States or Persian Gulf states, which have extensive relations with both India and Pakistan.
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said that there is an “urgent need to keep communication channels open” between the two bitter rivals.
