Pakistan’s prime minister has pledged to retaliate after India’s deadly missile strike, saying the country will “now have to pay the price” for their “blatant mistake”.
In a televised address on state broadcaster PTV, Shehbaz Sharif responded to Wednesday’s attack in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistan-administered parts of Kashmir, which a military spokesperson said had killed at least 31 civilians and wounded 46.
“For the blatant mistake that India made last night, it will now have to pay the price,” he said. “Perhaps they thought that we would retreat, but they forgot that… this is a nation of brave people.”
India said it struck nine Pakistani sites that provided “terrorist infrastructure”, which India said was the source of attacks against it. India’s defence minister claimed no civilian population was impacted.
Islamabad insisted that none of the locations targeted in Pakistan were militant camps.
India explained its strikes were in retaliation for the terrorist attack on 22 April, in which at least 26 people were shot dead by gunmen at a beauty spot near the resort town of Pahalgam in the India-administered part of Kashmir.
Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both sides claim in full and control in part.
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Indian forces attacked facilities linked to Islamist militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, two Indian military spokespeople told a briefing in New Delhi, in what New Delhi called “Operation Sindoor”.
Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri said the strikes were to pre-empt further attacks on India.
Pakistan’s military says exchanges of fire continued late Wednesday along the Line of Control, the border between it and India in Kashmir.
Pakistan also claimed it shot down several Indian aircraft on Wednesday, including three fighter jets that fell in India-administered Kashmir and India’s northern Punjab state.
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Calls for restraint
Donald Trump said he wants to see India and Pakistan “work it out. I want to see them stop, and hopefully they can stop now. And if I can do anything to help, I will be there”.
There were also calls for restraint from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, China, Russia and the UK.
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Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai told The World with Yalda Hakim that India and Pakistan “have to unite against the forces” trying to divide them.
“I hope that Pakistan and India and the international community will come together in this moment to try to de-escalate the tensions and promote peace, start a dialogue, because that is the only forward for all of us,” she said.
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Separately, the UK’s Foreign Office has advised Britons against all travel within 10km of the India-Pakistan border.
It has warned against travelling to the region of Jammu and Kashmir – including Pahalgam, Gulmarg, Sonamarg, the city of Srinagar and the Jammu-Srinagar national highway. The advice also suggests avoiding Manipur, in northeastern India.
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