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Pakistan and India lurched closer to full-scale war after Islamabad said it had launched short-range missiles over the border early on Saturday and India targeted air bases deep inside its neighbour’s territory.
Later on Saturday, India said Pakistan was moving troops towards the border. New Delhi said the move would escalate the conflict by potentially adding ground operations to cross-border aerial strikes. Pakistan’s military declined to comment on the claim.
Pakistan said it had launched Operation Bunyān Mārsūs — named after a Koranic phrase that the military said meant “Iron Wall” — as a response to missile and drone attacks by India since Wednesday.
Military officials said the attacks targeted a storage site for India’s supersonic BrahMos missile in Beas in the state of Punjab, the Udhampur Air Field in the Indian subregion of Jammu and Kashmir and an airfield in Pathankot, also in Punjab. Islamabad added that India had struck military bases overnight.
The latest clash between the nuclear-armed neighbours was triggered by the mass shooting of 25 Indians and a Nepali citizen in Pahalgam, a tourist hub in Indian-administered Kashmir, on April 22. India blamed the attack on militants backed by Pakistan. Pakistan denied involvement.
India responded on Wednesday by carrying out air strikes on what it said were terrorist camps in the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, which both countries claim.
Analysts said Saturday’s strikes represented a significant intensification of the conflict.
“This is escalatory from both sides and for two reasons,” said Sushant Singh, a lecturer in South Asian Studies at Yale University.
“One is the choice of high-profile military targets like air bases, and the fact that both countries claim to have taken out air defence units on the other side, which is a signal that they are going to come with a bigger package in the next strike.”
Before its strikes into India, Islamabad said its rival had launched six ballistic missiles towards three Pakistani air bases. These included the Nur Khan air base near the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which houses the military’s general headquarters. It said only a few missiles evaded air defences and none hit “air assets”.
At a briefing on Saturday, India said Pakistan had attempted “air intrusions” at more than 26 places, from Srinagar in Kashmir in the north to Naliya, in Gujarat, near the southern tip of the border.
India also said Pakistan had fired a high-speed missile at an air base in Punjab in the early hours and targeted health centres and schools in air force centres in Jammu and Kashmir. It said it responded with “precision attacks only on identified military targets”, including technical infrastructure, command and control centres, radar sites and weapons storage areas.
An Indian district official in the border town of Rajouri in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir was killed in shelling from Pakistan, the region’s chief minister Omar Abdullah said.
The cross-border exchanges represent their worst fighting since the Kargil War of 1999. India has styled the conflict as an essential blow against a regime it accuses of supporting terrorism. Pakistan maintains that it is defending itself against an attack over a crime it did not commit.
Pakistan accuses India of killing 33 civilians, including seven children, since aerial and drone attacks began on Wednesday, and officials have vowed to “avenge” the lost lives.
Inter-Services Public Relations, which speaks on behalf of Pakistan’s military, said it launched locally made Fattah missiles. A poster attached to a land-based launcher said the missiles were “with love from” the seven children Islamabad said were killed by India on Wednesday, according to images shared by ISPR.
India has described its strikes on Pakistan as “measured, non-escalatory, proportionate, and responsible”.
Diplomatic efforts to defuse the conflict intensified this week. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, phoned the Pakistani army chief Asim Munir to urge calm and offer help in starting talks between the neighbours “to avoid future conflicts”, according to the US state department.
Saudi Arabia sent Adel al-Jubeir, a senior diplomat, to India and Pakistan this week. It said it was “part of the kingdom’s efforts to de-escalate and end the ongoing military confrontation”,
Additional reporting by Ahmed Al Omran
