India strikes Pakistan, 5 Indian jets downed by Pak military

India attacked Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir on Wednesday and Pakistan said it had shot down five Indian fighter jets in the worst fighting in more than two decades between the nuclear-armed neighbouring enemies.

India said it struck nine Pakistani "terrorist infrastructure" sites, some of them linked to an attack by Islamist militants on Hindu tourists that killed 26 people in Indian Kashmir last month. Islamabad said six Pakistani locations were targeted, and that none of them were militant camps. Eight people killed, it said.

Indian forces attacked the headquarters of Islamist militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Indian defence source told Reuters.

"India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution," the Indian defence ministry said in a statement.

Pakistan said Indian missiles hit three sites and a military spokesperson told Reuters five Indian aircraft had been shot down, a claim not confirmed by India.

However, four local government sources in Indian Kashmir told Reuters that three fighter jets had crashed in separate areas of the Himalayan region during the night.

All three pilots had been hospitalised, the sources added. Indian defence ministry officials were not immediately available to confirm the information.

Images circulating on local media showed a large, damaged cylindrical chunk of silver-coloured metal lying in a field at one of the crash sites.

"All of these engagements have been done as a defensive measure," Pakistan military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said. "Pakistan remains a very responsible state. However, we will take all the steps necessary for defending the honour, integrity and sovereignty of Pakistan, at all cost."

Islamabad called the assault a "blatant act of war" and said it had informed the U.N. Security Council that Pakistan reserved the right to respond appropriately to Indian aggression.

The South Asian neighbours also exchanged intense shelling and heavy gunfire across much of their de facto border in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, police and witnesses told Reuters.

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.

Since a 2003 ceasefire, to which both countries recommitted in 2021, targeted strikes between the neighbours are extremely rare, especially Indian strikes on Pakistani areas outside Pakistani Kashmir.

But analysts said the risk of escalation is higher than in the recent past due to the severity of India's attack, which New Delhi called "Operation Sindoor". Sindoor is the Hindi language word for vermilion, a red powder that Hindu women put on the forehead or parting of their hair as a sign of marriage.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the fighting "a shame" and added, "I hope it ends quickly."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for maximum military restraint from both countries, a spokesperson said.

SMOKE, FIRE

A Pakistani military spokesperson said eight people had been killed in the Indian strikes, 35 were injured and two were missing.

A damaged portion of Bilal Mosque is seen after it was hit by an Indian strike in Muzaffarabad

The Pakistani army's shelling across the frontier in Kashmir killed seven civilians and injured 35, police there said.

Indian TV channels showed videos of explosions, fire, large plumes of smoke in the night sky and people fleeing in several places in Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir. 

In Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, damage from the Indian strike was visible at sunrise. Security forces surrounded a small mosque in a hill-side residential neighbourhood which had been hit, with its minaret collapsed.

All schools in Pakistani Kashmir, the national capital Islamabad, and much of Indian Kashmir and the populous Pakistani province of Punjab were ordered closed on Wednesday in the aftermath of the strikes.

Imran Shaheen, a district official in Pakistani Kashmir, said two mortars landed on a house in the town of Forward Kahuta, killing two men and injuring several women and children. In another village, a resident had been killed in firing, Shaheen said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Islamabad was responding to the Indian attacks but did not provide details. Pakistan's populous province of Punjab declared an emergency, its chief minister said, and hospitals and emergency services were on high alert.

A Pakistani military spokesperson told broadcaster Geo that two mosques were among the sites hit by India. The Pakistani defence minister told Geo that all the sites were civilian and not militant camps.

He said India's claim of targeting "camps of terrorists is false".

After India's strikes, the Indian army said in a post on X on Wednesday: "Justice is served."