If you’re just joining us, India has attacked nine sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on Wednesday with at least three deaths reported. Pakistan has said it was mounting a response as the worst fighting in years erupted between the two countries. Armies of the nuclear-armed neighbours have also exchanged intense shelling and heavy gunfire across their frontier in disputed Kashmir in at least three places, police and witnesses told the Reuters news agency. The offensive has occurred amid heightened tensions in the aftermath of an attack on Hindu tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month. Islamist assailants killed 26 men in the 22 April attack, the worst such violence targeted at civilians in India in nearly two decades.
India said it struck “terrorist infrastructure” where attacks against it were planned and directed. Pakistan’s defence minister has told local media that all sites targeted by India were civilian and not militant camps. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has announced a meeting of the national security committee in Islamabad following the strikes. The strikes came just hours after Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said that water flowing across India’s borders would be stopped. Pakistan had warned that tampering with the rivers that flow from India into its territory would be an “act of war.”
Modi did not mention Islamabad specifically, but his speech came after Delhi suspended its part of the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty, which governs water critical to Pakistan for consumption and agriculture. “India’s water used to go outside, now it will flow for India,” Modi said in a speech. The Indus treaty governs the distribution and use of waters from the Indus River and its tributaries, which feed 80% of Pakistan’s irrigated agriculture and its hydropower. As well as suspending the treaty, Delhi has suspended trade with Pakistan, summoned and expelled its diplomats, and suspended visas for Pakistanis. Pakistan has also suspended all trade with India and closed its airspace to Indian airlines.
The director general of the media wing of Pakistan’s armed forces has confirmed to the Guardian that at least two jets of the Indian air force have been shot down. “I confirm that we have shot down at least two Indian Air Force jets,” said DG Lt General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry. Separately a senior security official, requesting anonymity, said that the military shot down three Indian jets. “We have shot down one jet in Bathinda, Indian Punjab province bordering with Pakistan Punjab province, and two jets in Indian occupied Kashmir in Awantipora and Akhnoor. They were in their airspace after the attacks and we had fired missiles,” said the official. He added that “India had started the conflict with its attacks on civilians in Pakistan. We had to retaliate. We had to protect our sovereignty.”
A US State Department spokesperson has said they are aware of reports of the ongoing attacks but had “no assessment to offer at this time. This remains an evolving situation and we are closely monitoring developments.” In recent days, Washington has urged the nuclear-armed neighbours to work with each other to de-escalate tensions and arrive at a “responsible solution.” US leaders, including president Donald Trump, offered support to India after the 22 April militant attack in which 26 people were killed. American officials did not directly blame Pakistan.
Analysts said last month that Washington may leave India and Pakistan on their own in the early days of the tensions, in part because it already has a lot to deal with, given US involvement in trying to reach diplomatic goals in Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza.
South-Asia analyst Michael Kugelman has told the Associated Press that “these are some of the most high-intensity Indian strikes in Pakistan in years, and Pakistan’s response will surely pack a punch as well.” “These are two strong militaries that, even with nuclear weapons as a deterrent, are not afraid to deploy sizeable levels of conventional military force against each other. The escalation risks are real. And they could well increase, and quickly.” Kugelman notes that India’s strike on both India’s initial strikes and Pakistan’s response are already “higher up the escalatory ladder than any time in [the 2019] crisis.”
In 2019 India conducted air strikes on what it said was a militant training camp near the Pakistani town of Balakot in response to a suicide car bombing in Kashmir’s Pulwama area. Pakistan, which said the planes had bombed an empty hillside and not a camp, launched a retaliatory incursion into Indian airspace that led to a dogfight between the two air forces, leading to the capture of an Indian pilot. The situation cooled after he was released days later.
Comment: So is the future here? Is this going to be a water war with nuclear weapons? “The Guardian” is covering this with frequent updates.
TTG
What’s the political solutions:
India has put Pakistan to the wall with shutting off the water.
Pakistan has the choice of yielding and give up on Kashmir formally or the Kashmir resistance (as they would see it) as a solution. Not easy to swallow.
If Pakistan choose to fight. Nukes would be plausible as I don’t see the Pakistani army beating India’s. No water means millions of Pakistanis will die from thirst or hunger, so why not take India with them into nuclear hell? Let’s burn together.
Here the path will be decided by the personal character of Pakistan’s leadership. Will it be Death Before Dishonor or Live with the Humiliation.
Do anyone know the mindset of the Pakistani military?
Poul,
There was a terrorist attack in Kashmir recently. The usual. Crazy ass, blood thirsty muslims gunning down innocent Indian tourists who were just out for a day of family fun. I’m thinking that to some extent what is happening is similar to Israeli actions in Gaza post Oct 7 attack. Enough is enough.
The terrorists swim in the sea of the wider community, which supports them. Therefore, the sea must be drained. In this conflict it literally means draining the sea.
Hamas, these Pakistan guys, any muslim terrorist group, are not secret fringe elements at odds with the general population. Rather, they are the fighting element of the larger muslim population and its ideology. Everyone here will want to say I’m wrong and will want to defend the muslims. Ok. In that case, the Pakistani government, they guys who sheltered Bin Laden, could go into the region and clean out its own terrorist group as an act of good faith to India. But it won’t. So screw them. Let them go thirsty.
Reuters is reporting 5 Indian fighters shot down – 3 Rafales, one Su-30 and one MiG-29.
Reportedly at least some of them were shot down with Chinese PL-15 long range missiles which, as far as I can tell, are more advanced than anything the US has in its publicly disclosed arsenal.
I wonder if this could be a turning point for Chinese military exporters.
James,
Don’t be too quick to believe the total count. That report is based on Pakistani claims.