Dozens killed as India, Pakistan clash in worst violence in decades
By Sajjad QAYYUM with Bhuvan BAGGA in Poonch
Muzaffarabad, Pakistan (AFP) May 7, 2025
India and Pakistan exchanged heavy artillery fire along their contested frontier on Wednesday after New Delhi launched deadly missile strikes on its arch-rival, in the worst violence between the nuclear-armed neighbours in two decades.
At least 38 deaths were reported, with Islamabad saying 26 civilians were killed by the Indian strikes and firing along the border, and New Delhi adding at least 12 dead from Pakistani shelling.
The fighting came two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing an attack on the Indian-run side of disputed Kashmir.
The South Asian neighbours have fought multiple wars over the divided territory since they were carved out of the sub-continent at the end of British rule in 1947.
The latest violence exceeds India’s strikes in 2019, when New Delhi said it had hit “several militants” after a suicide bomber attacked an Indian security force convoy, killing 40.
The Indian army said “justice is served”, reporting nine “terrorist camps” had been destroyed, with New Delhi adding that its actions “have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”.
Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of launching the strikes to “shore up” his domestic popularity, adding that Islamabad “won’t take long to settle the score”.
Military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said five Indian jets had been downed across the border.
An Indian senior security source, who asked not to be named, said three of its fighter jets had crashed on home territory.
Pakistan said a hydropower plant in Kashmir was also targeted by India, damaging a dam structure, after India threatened to stop the flow of water on its side of the border.
Pakistan had earlier warned that tampering with the rivers that flow into its territory would be an “act of war”.
– Calls for calm –
World leaders have issued urgent calls for de-escalation, while Pakistan’s National Security Committee, which convened an emergency meeting led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and attended by Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir, called on the international community to hold India “accountable”.
In Muzaffarabad, the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, troops cordoned off streets around a mosque Islamabad said was struck, with blast marks visible on the walls of several nearby homes.
The 70-year caretaker of the mosque was killed, and buried later Wednesday at a funeral attended by around 600 people, an AFP journalist saw.
“There were terrible sounds during the night, there was panic among everyone,” said Muhammad Salman, who lives close to the mosque.
“We are moving to a safer place… we are homeless now,” added 24-year-old Tariq Mir who was hit in the leg by shrapnel.
United Nations military observers arrived on Wednesday afternoon to inspect the site, which was blown out on one side.
Residents had begun collecting damaged copies of the Koran among concrete, wood, and iron debris scattered across the grounds.
Pakistan said 21 civilians were killed in the strikes — including four children — while five were killed by gunfire at the border.
At least 12 people were killed and 29 others wounded in Poonch in Indian-administered Kashmir, local official Azhar Majid told AFP.
“We woke up as we heard the sound of firing”, Farooq, a man in the Indian town of Poonch, told the Press Trust of India news agency from his hospital bed, his head wrapped in bandage.
“I saw shelling raining down.”
India had been widely expected to respond militarily to the April 22 attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir by gunmen it said were from Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.
The assault in the tourist hotspot of Pahalgam killed 26 people, mainly Hindu men.
New Delhi has blamed Islamabad for backing the attack, sparking a series of heated threats and diplomatic tit-for-tat measures.
Pakistan rejects the accusations and called for an independent probe, and on Wednesday Prime Minister Sharif labelled India’s strikes a “heinous act of aggression” that would “not go unpunished”.
The two sides have exchanged gunfire nightly since April 24 along the LoC, according to the Indian army. Pakistan also said it has conducted two missile tests.
– ‘Maximum restraint’ –
“Escalation between India and Pakistan has already reached a larger scale than during the last major crisis in 2019, with potentially dire consequences”, International Crisis Group analyst Praveen Donthi said.
Diplomats have piled pressure on leaders to step back.
“The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan,” the spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.
US President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington he hoped that the fighting “ends very quickly”.
Concern poured in, including from China — a mutual neighbour of both nations — as well as from Britain, France and Russia, Germany and Turkey, while airlines have cancelled, diverted or rerouted flights.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected in New Delhi on Wednesday, two days after a visit to Islamabad, as Tehran seeks to mediate.
Rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.
India regularly blames its neighbour for backing armed groups fighting its forces in Kashmir, a charge that Islamabad denies.
India-Pakistan clashes: what we know
Islamabad (AFP) May 7, 2025 -
India and Pakistan have exchanged missile and artillery strikes in a major escalation of hostilities between the nuclear-armed neighbours after a deadly attack in disputed Kashmir.
New Delhi blames Islamabad for the militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago that left 26 civilians dead.
The two sides exchanged threats and diplomatic measures, culminating in Indian missile strikes early on Wednesday and a swift vow from Pakistan to “settle the score”.
Here is what we know about the crisis, and the background behind it.
– What is the latest? –
India launched what it called “precision strikes at terrorist camps” in Pakistan-administered Kashmir in the early hours of Wednesday.
Pakistan says 26 civilians were killed in the strikes on at least six locations and firing along the border.
The targets include locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir as well as Bahawalpur and Muridke, cities in the country’s most populous province of Punjab, bordering India.
Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told AFP the retaliation had “already started”, after the military earlier said it would respond “at a time and place of its own choosing”.
India accused Pakistan of firing artillery across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border in Kashmir, killing three civilians.
– What triggered the crisis? –
India was incensed by an April 22 militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir, which left 26 people dead, mainly Hindu men, in the tourist hotspot of Pahalgam.
Nobody has claimed the attack but New Delhi said the gunmen were from Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terror organisation with a history of carrying out attacks on Indian soil.
The group has long been rumoured to have murky links to the Pakistani military establishment — which Islamabad denies.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi accused Pakistan of supporting “cross-border terrorism” and gave his military “complete operational freedom” to respond.
The two sides expelled diplomats and last week Pakistan said it had “credible intelligence” India was preparing a military strike.
– Who controls Kashmir? –
The scenic Himalayan region has been a major bone of contention between India and Pakistan since the two countries were created when British colonial rule ended in 1947.
Kashmir’s ruler dithered on whether to join Hindu-majority India or Muslim-majority Pakistan, leading to the first war between the two neighbours.
Further full-blown wars between India and Pakistan over Kashmir followed in 1965 and 1999, punctuated by regular uprisings and border skirmishes in the years between and since.
Both sides control part of Kashmir but claim the territory in full, and keep troops stationed to watch over the LoC.
The two sides came close to another war in 2019 after 41 Indian paramilitaries were killed in a suicide attack blamed on a Pakistani militant group.
– How has the world reacted? –
Both India and Pakistan boast considerable arsenals of atomic weapons and Kashmir has long been identified as one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints for potential nuclear war.
As a result, there have been pleas for calm and restraint from around the world since the latest crisis erupted with the April 22 attack.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called for “maximum restraint”, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan,” Dujarric said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken with his counterparts from India and Pakistan, encouraging both sides to engage in discussions.
China, a neighbour to both countries and a close ally of Pakistan, expressed “regret over India’s military action this morning” and said it was “concerned about the current developments”, in a statement from a foreign ministry spokesperson.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected in New Delhi on Wednesday, two days after a visit to Islamabad, as Tehran seeks to mediate.
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