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Pakistan vowed to retaliate after India launched air strikes against its neighbour over last month’s deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir.
India on Wednesday said it had carried out “precision strikes” on nine “terrorist camps” in Pakistan and the part of the disputed region of Kashmir that Pakistan administers.
The assault appeared to be India’s most extensive military attack on its neighbour in decades, with Pakistan claiming 26 people had been killed.
In response, Islamabad said it had shot down five Indian military jets and a combat drone and warned of further retaliation that could bring the two countries into open conflict.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on X that his country had “every right to respond forcefully . . . and a strong response is indeed being given”, calling India’s strikes an “act of war”.
Long-standing tensions between the two neighbours, which both claim Kashmir, escalated after gunmen killed 25 Indians and a Nepali citizen in Pahalgam, a tourist hub in Indian-administered Kashmir, on April 22.
India said on Wednesday that it had attacked Pakistan to bring the planners of the Pahalgam attack to justice and because it had evidence further attacks were impending.
“There was thus a compulsion both to deter and pre-empt,” said Vikram Misri, foreign secretary.
Vyomika Singh, an air force commander, said that India acted with “clinical efficiency” and used “niche technology weapons with careful selection to ensure that there was no collateral damage”, in an operation that lasted less than half an hour.
Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, Pakistan’s military spokesperson, told reporters 26 Pakistanis had died, and 46 others were injured. The dead included two three-year-old girls and seven women, he added.
Chaudhry said India targeted mosques in at least three different locations, killing people inside the houses of worship.
The Financial Times could not independently verify the two countries’ claims.
New Delhi called Wednesday’s attack on Pakistan “Operation Sindoor”, a reference to the red mark Hindu women wear in their hair parting, the traditional Hindu symbol of marriage.
A picture of a honeymooning couple attacked in Pahalgam, with the wife kneeling by the body of her husband, was widely shared in India after the attack.
Pakistan has denied any involvement in the attack in Kashmir and has called for an independent investigation.
Pakistani military and diplomatic officials told the FT they had shot down five Indian fighter jets on Wednesday, including three French-made Rafales and two Russian-made planes.
They claimed the aircraft had attempted to fire at Pakistan from Indian airspace. New Delhi did not immediately confirm Islamabad’s claims.
Relations between India and Pakistan have soured sharply since the Pahalgam attack, with New Delhi suspending a treaty under which it shares water with Islamabad in the Indus river basin, and the two countries halting trade and shutting their land border.
Sharif, Pakistan’s leader, called a national security committee meeting for Wednesday morning, while India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a cabinet meeting.
Pakistan has closed its airspace and shut schools in the part of Kashmir it administers, in the capital Islamabad, and throughout Punjab.
“There will be retaliation of some kind by Pakistan in the coming hours,” said C Raja Mohan, an Indian international affairs analyst. “In the meantime, there is diplomacy going on behind the scenes and the US will be involved at some level.”
Washington, which has close ties with both India and Pakistan, has urged restraint. US President Donald Trump called the strikes “a shame” and said he hoped the conflict “ends very soon”.
China, which borders both countries, said India’s military operation was “regrettable” and urged both sides to exercise restraint.
The exchange of hostilities in the region prompted multiple airlines to reroute and cancel flights that were due to land in or fly over the south Asian countries on Wednesday.
