India and Pakistan trade fire and accusations amid fears of wider confrontation
Tensions have soared between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Pakistan’s authorities said Indian attack drones killed two civilians and wounded four soldiers.
India, meanwhile, accused its neighbour of attempting its own attack, as tensions soared between the nuclear-armed rivals.
India acknowledged that it targeted Pakistan’s air defence system, and Islamabad said it shot down several of the drones.
India said it “neutralised” Pakistan’s attempts to hit military targets. It was not possible to verify all of the claims.
In Indian-controlled Kashmir, meanwhile, residents of the city of Jammu reported hearing explosions and sirens late on Thursday.
India’s Headquarters of the Integrated Defence Staff, a central co-ordinating arm for all Indian armed forces, said military stations in Jammu, Udhampur and Pathankot were targeted by Pakistan using missiles and drones. It said the attacks were repelled and no casualties were reported.
Shesh Paul Vaid, the region’s former director-general of police, said there was a complete blackout in Jammu following loud explosions.
“Bombing, shelling, or missile strikes suspected,” he wrote on social media.
Mr Vaid told The Associated Press that the Jammu Airport was likely under attack and that some of the 50 loud explosions he heard were likely because “our defence system is at work”.
Jammu and Udhampur are close to the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan. Pathankot is in India’s Punjab state.
Sirens were also heard in some parts of the region’s main city of Srinagar, residents said. It was followed by a blackout in the city and other parts of the region.
Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement rejected the Indian claims that Pakistan launched attacks on Pathankot, Jaisalmer and Srinagar, saying “these claims are entirely unfounded, politically motivated, and part of a reckless propaganda campaign aimed at maligning Pakistan”.
It added that “such actions not only further endanger regional peace but also reveal a disturbing willingness to exploit misinformation for political and military ends”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke on Thursday to the Pakistani prime minister and India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, urging both sides to de-escalate the situation, the US State Department said.
The back and forth came a day after Indian missiles struck several locations in Pakistan, killing 31 civilians, according to Pakistani officials.
New Delhi said it was retaliating after gunmen killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, in India-controlled Kashmir last month. India accused Pakistan of being behind the assault but Islamabad denies that.
The two sides have also traded heavy fire across their frontier in disputed Kashmir, and Pakistan claimed it killed scores of Indian soldiers. There was no confirmation from India.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed to avenge the deaths in India’s missile strikes, raising fears that the two countries could be headed towards another all-out conflict.
Leaders from both nations face mounting public pressure to show strength and seek revenge, and the heated rhetoric and competing claims could be a response to that pressure.
The relationship between the countries has been shaped by conflict and mutual suspicion, most notably in their dispute over Kashmir. They have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region, which is split between them and claimed by both in its entirety.
With tensions high, India evacuated thousands of people from villages near the highly militarised frontier in the region. Tens of thousands of people slept in shelters overnight, officials and residents said on Thursday.
About 2,000 villagers also fled their homes in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
India fired several Israeli-made Harop drones at Pakistan overnight and into Thursday afternoon, according to Pakistani army spokesman Lt Gen Ahmad Sharif.
Pakistani forces shot down 25, he said. A civilian was killed and another wounded when debris from a downed drone fell in the province of Sindh.
One drone damaged a military site near the city of Lahore and wounded four soldiers, and another fell in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near the capital, according to Lt Gen Sharif.
“The armed forces are neutralising them as we speak,” Lt Gen Sharif said on the state-run Pakistan Television early Thursday afternoon.
In Lahore, local police official Mohammad Rizwan said a drone was downed near Walton Airport, an airfield in a residential area about 16 miles from the border with India that also contains military installations.
India’s Defence Ministry said its armed forces “targeted air defence radars and systems” in several places in Pakistan, including Lahore.
India, meanwhile, accused Pakistan of attempting “to engage a number of military targets” with missiles and drones along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir and elsewhere along their border.
“The debris of these attacks in now being recovered from a number of locations,” it said.
Pakistani information minister Attaullah Tarar told parliament that so far Pakistan has not responded to India’s missiles attacks, but there will be a response at an appropriate time.
The Harop drone, produced by Israel’s IAI, is one of several in India’s inventory, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance report.
According to IAI, the Harop combines the capabilities of a drone and a missile and can operate at long ranges.
The two sides have exchanged heavy fire over the past day.
Mr Tarar, the Pakistani information minister, said that the country’s armed forces have killed 40 to 50 Indian soldiers in the exchanges along the Line of Control.
India has not commented on that claim. Earlier, the army said one Indian soldier was killed by shelling on Wednesday.
Mr Tarar denied Indian accusations that Pakistan had fired missiles towards the Indian city of Amritsar, saying in fact an Indian drone fell in the city. Neither claim could be confirmed.
India’s Foreign Ministry has said that 16 civilians were killed on Wednesday during exchanges of fire across the de facto border.
Pakistani officials said six people have been killed near the highly militarised frontier in exchanges of fire over the past day.
Flights remained suspended at more than two dozen airports across northern and western regions in India, according to travel advisories by multiple airlines. Pakistan resumed flights nationwide after a suspension at four airports, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.
