Pakistan has warned that it will “avenge” those who were killed by Indian airstrikes in the early hours of Wednesday. In a late night address to Pakistan on Wednesday, the country’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said: “We make this pledge, that we will avenge each drop of the blood of these martyrs.” The strikes, which India said was in response to an attack in Kashmir, has left dozens dead. As part of the worst escalation in decades between the two countries, at least 43 deaths have been reported. According to Pakistan, 31 civilians were killed by the Indian strikes and firing along the border while New Delhi said at least 12 were killed as a result of Pakistani shelling. Meanwhile, Pakistan military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said five Indian jets had been downed across the border, Agence France-Presse reports. Speaking to the outlet, an Indian senior security source said that three of its fighter jets had crashed on home territory. Here are some images coming through the newswires from India and Pakistan: A Pakistani cabinet minister has described India’s strikes as a “shameful and cowardly aggression” and said they had targeted “peaceful civilians, including women and children”. Ahsan Iqbal, in an interview with the BBC, said India’s claim that it targeted what it called “terrorist infrastructure sites” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir was “a big lie” through which it was “trying to mislead the world”. He said: Who are the casualties? How can be a seven-year-old boy be a terrorist? How can be a five-year-old girl be a terrorist? How can be a housewife, a women be a terrorist? He said Pakistan’s government has given the country’s armed forces “the mandate to choose the time and the manner in which we can respond appropriately”. A state of emergency has been declared in all hospitals and health facilities in the Pakistani province of Sindh. A notice issued by the provincial health department, seen by Dawn, said the leaves of all medical personnel and support staff have been cancelled. The notice reads: The Health Department, Government of Sindh is placing all public health facilities across the province on high alert to ensure [an] immediate and effective emergency response. Control of Kashmir, in the foothills of the Himalayas, has been disputed since India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947. Both claim it in full, but each controls a section of the territory, separated by one of the world’s most heavily militarised borders: the “line of control” based on a ceasefire border established after their 1947-48 war. India and Pakistan have gone to war twice since over Kashmir, most recently in 1999. The dispute stems from the partition of colonial India in 1947, when small, semi-autonomous “princely states” across the subcontinent were being folded into India or Pakistan, and the local ruler chose to become part of India despite the fact the area had a Muslim majority. Armed insurgents in Kashmir have resisted Delhi for decades, with many Muslim Kashmiris supporting the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. India accuses Pakistan of backing militants – a claim Pakistan denies. In 2019 Narendra Modi’s government launched a severe security crackdown in Indian-administered Kashmir and revoked the region’s special status, which had granted it limited autonomy since 1949. The move fulfilled a longstanding Hindu-nationalist pledge and was widely welcomed across India, but angered many in the territory itself. New rules were implemented that allowed outsiders to buy land in Kashmir for the first time, which many saw as an attempt by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) to dispossess them of their land and change the Muslim demography of the region. India’s string of attacks on Pakistan overnight comes at a time when warfare has become increasingly normalised internationally and the restraints of the global diplomatic system weakened. Though flare-ups between the two south Asian powers are nothing new, India’s Operation Sindoor – a response, Delhi says, to the killing of 26 in a terror attack in Kashmir last month – is already notably more aggressive than recent military actions launched by Delhi against its neighbour in 2016 and 2019, raising the stakes for Pakistan’s promised response to what it says was “an act of war”. It is an uncomfortable moment, not least because India and Pakistan possess considerable stocks of nuclear weapons, each with about 170 warheads. Their armies and air forces are sizeable: India has 1.23 million troops and more than 500 combat jets, against 560,000 for Pakistan and more than 400 combat jets. Though nobody seriously expects all-out fighting, changes to the global context suggest that violence between the two nuclear powers could escalate. Samir Puri, from the Chatham House thinktank, said: Over the past three years, the idea that countries do not go to war has disappeared. It’s a daily reality and one that has expanded the realms of the imagination for hawkish planners in hotspots around the world. Read the full analysis: India’s Pakistan strikes show how warfare has been normalised again Satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies show the aftermath of Indian strikes on Pakistani city of Muridke. A Pakistan military spokesperson said 57 flights were in the air at the time of the Indian strikes early on Wednesday. Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, in quotes carried by Dawn, said: There were multiple flights with thousands of passengers whose lives were put in grave danger. These were not just Pakistani flights, but there were Saudi flights, Qatari, Emirates, Etihad, Gulf Air, Chinese and Korean flights. The UK’s Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for the region, warning against all travel within 10 kilometres of the India-Pakistan border. It advises against all travel to the region of Jammu and Kashmir, including Pahalgam, Gulmarg, Sonamarg, the city of Srinagar and the Jammu-Srinagar national highway. The FCDO also advises against all travel to within 10 miles of the line of control, the de facto border that divides disputed Kashmir. A high-ranking French intelligence official has said one Rafale fighter jet operated by the Indian Air Force (IAF) was downed by Pakistan. Pakistan has claimed to have shot down five IAF jets in retaliation for the Indian attack, including three Rafales – sophisticated multi-role fighters made in France. French authorities are looking into whether more than one Rafale jets were shot down by Pakistan overnight, the French intelligence official told CNN. The outlet reports that this would mark the first time that a Rafale has been lost in combat. US president Donald Trump has said he wants India and Pakistan to “stop now” and that “if I can do anything to help, I will.” “It’s so terrible,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday. He said: My position is I get along with both. I know both very well, and I want to see them work it out. I want to see them stop, and hopefully they can stop now. “If I can do anything to help, I will be there,” he added. Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, said his country is “trying to avoid” a full-fledged war with India, but that its military is “prepared” for the scenario. Asif, in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, said India’s overnight strike marked an “invitation to expand the conflict” with Pakistan and was a “clear-cut violation”. He said Pakistan’s military was braced “for an all-out war”, adding: What happens next is we are prepared for an all-out war. There is absolutely no doubt, because India is increasing the intensity, the stakes of this conflict. So… we can’t be caught with our guards down. Footage shows the aftermath of India’s missile attack on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Wednesday. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has spoken with Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, in a phone call on Wednesday. A readout of the call by the Turkish presidency says Erdoğan conveyed his solidarity and supported what he called Pakistan’s “calm and restrained policies” in the crisis. It says: Erdoğan stated that Turkey was ready to do what it can to prevent the tensions from escalating, and that his diplomatic contacts in that regard would continue. Erdoğan also said he found “appropriate” Pakistan’s call for an investigation into last month’s attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that triggered the crisis. Separately, Turkey’s foreign ministry said the overnight missile attacks by India created the risk of an “all-out war”. For days, residents living on both sides of the volatile border between India and Pakistan dividing the disputed region of Kashmir had been bracing themselves for war. In Indian-administered Kashmir, residents living in border villages had been preparing bunkers and stocking up supplies. At around 1am on Wednesday, the whistle of missiles overhead and the shuddering boom of explosions over the border alerted them that Indian strikes on Pakistan had begun. In the village of Wuyen, in Pulwama district of southern Indian Kashmir, people reported that an object, suspected to be an aircraft, had fallen from the sky. Firefighters were immediately sent to extinguish the resulting blaze. While officials declined to confirm whether it was a military aircraft, witnesses reported hearing a loud explosion at about midnight accompanied by the sound of fighter jets overhead. “It sounded like powerful thunder. When I looked outside, I saw a massive fireball,” recounted one local resident. Read the full story: ‘I hope we survive this hell tonight’: people in Kashmiri border villages fear more strikes A Pakistan army spokesperson has updated the death toll from India’s overnight missile attacks from 26 to 31. Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, at a briefing with reporters, said 57 others were injured from the strikes. Here’s a map showing the region and places inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir that were struck by the Indian attacks overnight on Wednesday. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said it took “only a few hours” for his military to bring its enemy to its knees. Pakistan is a “nation of courageous people” who will “fight until the last drop of blood”, Sharif said during a televised address to the nation. He added: We will promise that every drop of their blood that has been shed will be made accountable. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has been addressing the nation following an overnight missile attack by the Indian air force. India “will have to suffer the consequences” of its airstrikes, Sharif said in quotes carried by Dawn. He said: Perhaps they thought we would retreat – but they overlooked the fact that this is a nation built on courage. Shehbaz described the strikes as “cowardly”: In India’s cowardly attack, 26 innocent civilians were slain and 46 were injured … We just offered funeral prayers for a slain child, seven-year-old Irtaza Abbas. Hello and welcome to our coverage of the escalation in tensions between Pakistan and India, after India launched a series of strikes on Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday. It’s 10pm in Islamabad and 10.30pm in New Delhi. Here’s what we know so far: At least 26 people, including several children, were killed and 46 others injured after India launched missile strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. One Indian missile strike hit a mosque in the city of Bahawalpur in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, killing 13 people, including two three-year-old girls. Other locations hit were near Muridke in Punjab and Kotli in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, where a strike on a mosque killed several people, including a 16-year-old girl. India said its overnight strikes targeted nine sites of “terrorist infrastructure” inside Pakistan. The Indian defence ministry said the strikes were in response to an attack targeting Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month that killed 26 people. The Indian attack was named “Operation Sindoor”, in reference to the wives of victims of the militant attack in the Baisaran Valley in Pahalgam in April. An Indian army spokesperson said Indian intelligence had uncovered evidence that “further attacks against India were impending” and said India needed to “both to deter and pre-empt”. Pakistan called the strikes an “act of war” and claimed it had shot down five Indian air force jets. “Pakistan gives a befitting reply to India,” said the Pakistan government in a statement. The office of the prime minister of Pakistan, Shehbaz Sharif, said the country’s armed forces had been authorised to undertake “corresponding actions”. Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, said his country is “trying to avoid” an “all-out war”. Asif, in an interview with CNN, said India’s missile attack was a “clear-cut violation” and marked an “invitation to expand the conflict”, and said Pakistan’s military was “prepared” for a “full-fledged war”. Pakistan denied that any of the sites hit by Indian missiles had been associated with terrorist infrastructure. Pakistan’s national security committee, chaired by Sharif, said the Indian strikes deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, including mosques, and were carried out “on the false pretext of the presence of imaginary terrorist camps”. “These unprovoked and unjustified attacks martyred innocent men, women and children,” it said. Indian and Pakistani troops engaged in heavy exchanges of fire on the line of control all through the night. Pakistan said another five people, including a five-year-old, were killed in artillery fire near the de facto border between the two countries. Indian police and medics said at least seven civilians were killed and 30 others wounded by retaliatory Pakistani firing and shelling overnight. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, cancelled plans to visit Europe after the strikes. Modi has chaired a meeting with senior cabinet ministers but has not spoken publicly since the targeted attacks. He had been scheduled to visit Croatia, Norway, and the Netherlands. There were calls for restraint from the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, and countries across the world. China called on India and Pakistan “to prioritise peace and stability, remain calm and exercise restraint, and avoid actions that could further complicate the situation”. Russia said it was concerned by the development, while Turkey urged “common sense”. The UK said it was ready to help both countries de-escalate the situation. US president Donald Trump called the fighting “a shame” said he hoped “it ends quickly.”
Author: Maya Yang (now) and Léonie Chao-Fong (earlier)