An Indian missile attack on Pakistani-controlled territory has killed at least 26 civilians and left 46 injured, Pakistan officials have said.
They said the strikes hit at least two sites previously tied to banned militant groups.
One hit the Subhan Mosque in the city of Bahawalpur in Punjab, killing 13 people including a child, according to Zohaib Ahmed, a doctor at a nearby hospital.
Meanwhile an Indian police official has said 10 people have been killed and 48 injured in Pakistani shelling of Indian Kashmir.
There are reports of firefights with Indian troops at multiple places along the ceasefire line in Kashmir.
India said its missile strikes were targeted at infrastructure used by militants at locations in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in the country’s eastern Punjab province.
Pakistan’s information minister Attaullah Tarar told Sky News’ The World With Yalda Hakim that his country would do all it could to defend its territory – as tensions escalate even further between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
India said it had carried out a “precision strike” on “terrorist camps” and its actions were “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”, adding: “No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted.”
It said a total of nine sites were targeted and the action by its armed forces was a response to a militant gun attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir last month, which killed 26 people, mostly Indian tourists.
But Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif said all the areas hit early on Wednesday morning local time were civilian places, not militant camps.
The mosque that was hit in Bahawalpur is adjacent to a seminary that once served as the central office of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant group outlawed in 2002.
Officials say the group has had no operational presence at the site since the ban.
Another missile hit a mosque in Muridke, damaging its structure. A sprawling building located nearby served as the headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba until 2013, when Pakistan banned the group and arrested its founder.
The attack in Kashmir was claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself Kashmir Resistance.
‘Act of war’
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif called the Indian missile attack an “act of war” and vowed his country “has every right to give a full and strong response”.
The Indian defence ministry said it had launched Operation Sindoor, hitting “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir “from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed”.
The ministry added: “These steps come in the wake of the barbaric Pahalgam terrorist attack in which 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen were murdered. We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable.”
Hours after the missile strikes, India’s foreign minister Dr. S. Jaishankar wrote on X that the world “must show zero tolerance for terrorism”.
