Pakistan says eight killed in Indian strikes as tensions soar
Eight people have been killed and 33 others injured in Indian attacks on Pakistani targets, the Pakistani military said early on Wednesday.
India launched missile strikes from air and surface on at least six locations inside Pakistan, claiming to target the hideouts of militant groups behind a late April attack in the disputed region of Kashmir in which at least 26 civilians were killed.
Pakistani military spokesman Major General Sharif Chaudhry said 24 missiles targeted six locations, mostly mosques and associated residential quarters, killing eight people and wounding 33. Another two people were missing, he said.
The Foreign Ministry did not give an exact number of victims, but said that women and children were among them. Previously, intelligence sources had reported that a child had been killed after missiles hit a mosque in the city of Bahwalpur in eastern Pakistan's Punjab.
Information Minister Atta Tarar said Pakistani missiles had shot down five Indian fighter jets and an unmanned aerial vehicle.
Bahawalpur is said to be the town where the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad, which India had accused of being behind several deadly cross-border attacks, is based.
A small town near the eastern city of Lahore was also hit. Another anti-India militant group, Lashkar-e-Toiba, is allegedly based there.
India's strikes also targeted the city of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, and a small town called Kotli in the same region, the military said.
India's Defence Ministry said in a statement in the early hours of Wednesday that at least nine sites were targeted in Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir from "where terrorist attacks against India have been planned."
The targets are "terrorist infrastructure," the ministry said in a statement.
"Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature," the statement said. "No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted."
Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his country reserved the right to retaliate for the "cowardly" attack.
Pakistani military sources told dpa they had started targeting military infrastructure on the Indian side of Kashmir.
Tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours have escalated since April 22, when at least 26 people were killed in a militant attack on a group of tourists in the town of Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir.
New Delhi pointed the finger at Islamabad, accusing it of supporting the militants. Pakistan denied having any role and offered to hold an independent investigation.
The conflict started hours after global bodies, including the United Nations and major world powers, urged the nuclear-armed rivals to exercise maximum restraint and avoid a direct conflict.
The South Asian nations have fought three wars since their independence in 1947 and pulled back from the brink of a fourth one over contested Kashmir, a picturesque Himalayan valley divided in parts between the two countries.
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