India launched military strikes on Pakistan on Wednesday and Pakistan claimed it shot down five Indian Air Force jets, in an escalation that has pushed the two nations to the brink of a wider conflict.
The escalation puts India and Pakistan, two neighbors with a long history of conflict, in dangerous territory, with Islamabad vowing to retaliate against India’s strikes and the international community calling for restraint.
New Delhi said the strikes are in response to the massacre of 26 people – mostly Indian tourists – who died in April when gunmen stormed a scenic mountain spot in the India-administered part of Kashmir, a disputed border region. India has blamed Pakistan for the attack, which Islamabad denies.
India launched “Operation Sindoor” in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time (Tuesday night ET) in both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Indian officials said nine sites were targeted, but claimed no Pakistani civilian, economic or military sites were struck. They said the 25-minute operation targeted “terrorist infrastructure” belonging to two militant groups – Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The name ‘Sindoor’ appears to be a reference to the red vermilion, or powder, many Hindu women wear on their foreheads after marriage. The April tourist massacre – which singled out men as victims – left several Indian women widowed.
But Pakistan is painting a different picture of the strikes – saying civilians were killed and mosques were hit. CNN has yet to verify those claims.
A Pakistani military spokesperson said six locations were hit with 24 strikes. Some of those strikes hit the densely populated province of Punjab, Pakistan’s military said, and were the deepest India has struck inside Pakistan since 1971, when the two countries fought one of their four wars.
Pakistani security sources claimed they had shot down five Indian Air Force jets and one drone during India’s attack.
They did not say exactly where, or how, the jets were downed – but said three Rafale jets were among those planes. India’s Rafale fighter jets are prized military assets that it bought from France only a few years ago.
India has not confirmed any planes were lost. CNN has not been able to verify the claim and has reached out to India’s government and military for comment.
An eyewitness and local government official said an unidentified aircraft crashed in the village of Wuyan in Indian-administered Kashmir. Photos published by the AFP news agency showed aircraft wreckage lying in a field next to a red-brick building.
It was not immediately clear from the photos who the aircraft belonged to.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday the country “has every right” to respond, calling India’s actions an “act of war.”
At least 26 civilians were killed and 46 injured by India’s strikes, a Pakistan military spokesperson said, according to the news agency Reuters.
Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s military, said those killed include teenagers and children – the youngest of whom was three years old.
Eight civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir were also killed by shelling by Pakistani troops from across the border, a senior Indian defense source told CNN.
