The Guardian, by Hannah Ellis-Petersen in Delhi, Shah Meer Baloch in Islamabad and Aakash Hassan in Kashmir: At least eight people, including a child, have been killed and 35 injured after India launched attacks on what it claimed were nine sites of “terrorist infrastructure” inside Pakistan, in a sharp escalation of hostilities between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Pakistan declared the strikes to be 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.
India had accused Pakistan of involvement in an attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month which killed 26 people. “We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable,” said the Indian defence ministry.
One Indian missile strike hit a mosque in the city of Bahawalpur in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, where a child was killed and a woman and man were injured. Other locations hit were near Muridke in Punjab and Kotli in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
Loud explosions were heard early on Wednesday, and power was knocked out in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, witnesses said.
On the Indian side of the Kashmir border, residents in the Kupwara district of Indian-administered Kashmir reported exchanges of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops on the line of control. The Indian army said that three civilians had died and five had been injured in the cross-border shelling.
Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, vowed to retaliate. “Pakistan has every right to respond forcefully to this act of war imposed by India, and a forceful response is being given,” he said.
“The Pakistani nation and the Pakistan armed forces know very well how to deal with the enemy,” he said. “We will never let the enemy succeed in its nefarious objectives.” He was to hold a meeting of the national security committee on Wednesday morning.
A statement by the Indian army said they had targeted “terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed”.
“Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution,” it said.
However Pakistan’s defence minister, Khawaja Asif, denied that any of the targets hit by Indian missiles were military installations and told the Guardian that at least six civilian areas had been targeted. “We are in the process of retaliating. You will see Pakistan’s response before the morning,” he said.
The missile attacks were reported around 1am local time. Pictures shared on social media showed the bloody body of a dead child and a seriously injured adult lying on stretchers. In a video widely shared on X a huge blast can be seen lighting up the night sky as smoke billows into the air.
Soon after the strikes, India accused Pakistan of violating the ceasefire agreement with artillery fire across the heavily militarised “line of control”, which marks the de facto border in Kashmir.
“We are hearing constant loud bangs and some shells have landed near civilian areas,” Haji Sanaullah, who lives in the Kupwara district of Indian-administered Kashmir, told the Guardian. A Pakistani military spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that exchanges of fire had taken place at multiple locations on the line of control.
Pakistan’s foreign affairs ministry said Indian forces had launched the strikes while staying in Indian airspace. It said the attack posed a significant threat to commercial air traffic.
“This reckless escalation has brought the two nuclear-armed states closer to a major conflict,” the statement said. Several major airlines said they were suspending flights to Pakistan and over swathes of northern India until midday local time on Wednesday.
The strikes came just hours after India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, said that water flowing across India’s borders would be stopped. Pakistan has warned that tampering with the rivers flowing into its territory would be an “act of war”.
Modi did not mention Islamabad specifically, but his speech came after Delhi suspended its part of the 65-year-old Indus waters treaty, which governs water critical to Pakistan for consumption and agriculture.
“India’s water used to go outside, now it will flow for India,” Modi said in a speech in Delhi.
The escalation comes amid soaring tensions between the neighbours in the aftermath of the attack in the Baisaran Valley, a picturesque meadow in Pahalgam, a well-known tourist town in Kashmir.
India blamed Pakistan for the attack but Pakistan rejected the accusations. The two sides have exchanged nightly gunfire since 24 April along the line of control.
Wednesday’s missile strikes are a dangerous heightening of friction between the south Asian neighbours, who have fought multiple wars since they were carved out of British colonial India in 1947.
For days the international community has piled pressure on Pakistan and India to step back from the brink of war.
A UN spokesperson said that António Guterres, the UN secretary general, was “very concerned” about the Indian strikes across the international border and the line of control.
“He calls for maximum military restraint from both countries. The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan,” the spokesperson said.
Prophetic Link:
“And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” Matthew 24:6-7
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