Pakistan said on Thursday that it had shot down 25 drones from India in its airspace, while India said it “neutralized” Pakistan’s attempts to strike military targets with drones and missiles, as fighting spread between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Pakistan shot down the Israeli-made drones from India at multiple locations, including the two largest cities of Karachi and Lahore, Pakistan military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said.
In addition, Chaudry said four army members were injured when a drone hit a military target near Lahore, and another drone was shot down over Rawalpindi, home to the Pakistan army’s heavily fortified headquarters.
“Indian drones continue to be sent into Pakistan airspace … [India] will continue to pay dearly for this naked aggression,” he said.
Dozens are dead after India fired missiles into Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir early Wednesday, saying it targeted militant camps, not civilians. Pakistan is vowing to retaliate, as families flee and fears of a wider conflict grow.
The Indian defence ministry said Pakistan attempted to engage a number of military targets in northern and western India on Wednesday night and early Thursday and were “neutralized” by Indian air defence systems.
In response, Indian forces targeted air defence radars and systems at a number of locations in Pakistan on Thursday, it said in a statement, adding that the “Indian response has been in the same domain with the same intensity as Pakistan.”
The latest exchanges come after India said it hit “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday, and two weeks after it accused the country of involvement in an attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir in which 26 people — mostly Hindu tourists — were killed.
The relationship between India and Pakistan has been fraught with tension since they gained independence from colonial Britain in 1947, and the countries have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir, and clashed countless times.
Both acquired nuclear weapons in the 1990s.
Dozens killed this week
Pakistan says at least 31 of its civilians were killed and about 50 wounded in Wednesday’s strikes and in cross-border shelling across the frontier in Kashmir that followed, while India says 16 of its civilians died, including five children, and 59 were wounded.
In the Kashmir valley, the cable car in Gulmarg, a major tourist attraction, was shut down due to its proximity to the border with Pakistan. A hotel manager there who did not want to be named said police had ordered the hotel vacated on Wednesday night.
Local media reported panic-buying in some cities in the Indian state of Punjab, which shares a border with Pakistan, as people hoarded essentials fearing a Pakistani retaliation to the Indian strikes.
Pakistan’s aviation authority “temporarily suspended” flight operations at airports in Lahore, Karachi and the northeastern city of Sialkot until noon. It did not give a reason for the suspension.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said New Delhi did not intend to escalate the situation.
“However, if there are military attacks on us, there should be no doubt that it will be met with a very, very firm response,” he said at a India-Iran Joint Commission Meeting.
The United Nations, along with numerous countries including China, Russia and the U.S. have urged both countries to act with restraint.
