Author: Harlet Jonson

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — India and Pakistan accused each other Thursday of further hostile operations, including drone attacks, one day after the nuclear-armed neighbors faced off in their worst military escalation in years.

Early Wednesday, New Delhi launched its deepest and deadliest strikes inside Pakistan in decades, hitting targets in Pakistani-administered Kashmir and — for the first time in over half a century — in the country’s most populous province, Punjab. Islamabad claimed to have downed several Indian warplanes in response to the strikes — which India has not confirmed or denied.

Both sides accused each other of limited attacks overnight. Pakistan’s military said it shot down 12 drones inside the country, while India’s Defense Ministry said it thwarted drone and missile attacks from Pakistan on Wednesday night into Thursday on 15 sites across the north and west. However, Pakistan denied carrying out any overnight attacks. India said its army targeted air defense radars and systems in Pakistan and “neutralised” an air defense system in Lahore.

The key question now is where the two countries go from here. Officials on both sides have claimed victory, with India saying it destroyed “terrorist camps” that it said were the target of the strikes.

But Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told Reuters on Thursday that retaliation was “increasingly becoming certain,” adding that “we have to respond.”

“Any further escalation by Pakistan,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said in a news conference Thursday, “will be responded to and is being responded to appropriately.”

Pakistan characterized the attacks as a “cowardly” strike on civilians — and on the nation itself. But in a televised address to Parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also appeared at times to strike a de-escalatory tone, saying the Pakistani military had given India “a tit-for-tat response.” Pakistan shot down five Indian warplanes, he said, including three French-made Rafales — a claim that could not be independently verified.

Pakistan’s chief military spokesman, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, described Thursday’s early-morning drone attacks as “yet another blatant military act of aggression” from India. One civilian was killed and another injured in the rural area of Miano, in Sindh province, Pakistani authorities said. Misri denied on Thursday that India had killed any civilians.

Pakistan said drones were downed in or around Rawalpindi, Chakwal, Attock, Lahore and Gujranwala — suggesting they reached deep into Pakistan. Rawalpindi is the location of Pakistan’s military headquarters.

Chaudhry also said one Indian drone near Lahore attacked a military target, injuring four soldiers and causing damage.

The U.S. Consulate in Lahore wrote in a security alert that it had directed all personnel to shelter in place because of “reports of drone explosions, downed drones, and possible airspace incursions in and near Lahore.”

In India, there were signs of unease Thursday. At least 21 airports in the country’s north will remain closed until at least Saturday, officials told an Indian news agency, while school was canceled in parts of the Kashmir region. Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said Thursday that India did not want to escalate tensions but would if pressed.

“If there are military attacks on us, there should be no doubt that it will be met with a very, very firm response,” he said in a meeting with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi.

“Kashmir has been through a lot in the last three decades, but I have never been this scared,” said Zahid, 45, a resident of Wuyan village in the district of Pulwama, where locals say a jet crashed Wednesday night minutes after India launched its attack.

Zahid, who spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals, said he was sleeping at home when the jet crashed into a school building. “I had seen war footage only on television so far. Never imagined it would be this scary in reality,” he said.

As Islamabad now weighs whether to retaliate after the deadly Indian strikes, the public mood in Pakistan will be a key factor, analysts said.

“There’s mounting public pressure in Pakistan to take some form of retaliatory action,” said Nishank Motwani, an analyst with the U.S. branch of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a government-funded think tank.

Pakistan’s military, long seen as the ultimate power broker there, saw its standing erode after the 2023 arrest of former prime minister Imran Khan and may view the nationalistic fervor as a way to win back public favor.

Many Pakistanis applauded the army’s response to the Indian strikes, with some gathering on the streets to cheer Wednesday and Thursday. “We are happy that the planes were shot down,” said Adnan Shahid, 35, a teacher in Sialkot, one of the districts targeted by Indian strikes.

In Islamabad, authorities urged citizens on Thursday to join the civil defense brigades.

Usman Mujtaba, a 34-year-old who lives in southern Punjab, said many of his friends are eager to join the military. “Morale is high,” he said, “and people want to join our armed forces to fight India.”

A music video for a new war song spreading on social media in Pakistan — but blocked in India — showed soldiers marching in formation and firing artillery.

But for Pakistan, escalation comes with growing risks. The United States and China — Pakistan’s most powerful backers — called Wednesday for mediation between New Delhi and Islamabad, but it was unclear who would take the lead on diplomatic efforts or whether the two countries were ready to seriously engage.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized to Pakistan’s prime minister on a Thursday phone call that both countries should “work closely to de-escalate the situation,” according to the Pakistani leader’s office.

If Pakistan chooses to attack a military or strategic infrastructure target, killing a large number of people, “that could lead to massive escalation,” said Sushant Singh, a Yale University lecturer and former Indian military official.

Questions also remain about the ultimate goals of India’s escalation this week. New Delhi said the strikes were in retaliation for last month’s rampage by gunmen in a tourist area in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir. Twenty-six people were killed— 25 Indians and one Nepalese citizen — making it the deadliest assault on Indian civilians since the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai by a Pakistani-based militant organization that left 166 people dead.

India linked the April 22 attack to Pakistan, but Islamabad denied any involvement and has called for an international investigation.

After Wednesday’s strikes on Pakistan, there was an undercurrent of Hindu nationalism in New Delhi. Some senior politicians fawned over India’s code name for its strikes — Operation Sindoor, named for the vermilion that adorns Hindu brides and a likely reference to images of Hindu women grieving over the bodies of husbands slain in the Kashmir attacks.

Pravin Sawhney, the editor of an Indian defense magazine and a former army official, said he is troubled by the religious undertones of the operation’s name, which local media said was chosen by the country’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Sawhney said that politicizing India’s secular military is harmful to unit cohesion and that the intent was very clear: “A political message is being sent to the people of India,” he said, “that Hindus were killed there. So we have taken revenge.”

Others believe India’s message to Pakistan was the more important objective. Motwani, the ASPI analyst, said that by showing India has the “capability to strike by air from within its own borders deep inside Pakistan,” New Delhi may be trying to “create a strategic space” for future operations and to “rewrite the deterrence playbook in South Asia.”

Wednesday’s escalation probably also holds strategic lessons. For instance, he said,if Pakistan’s claims that it downed Indian warplanes prove to be correct, perhaps India will rely more on drones in the future, he said.

But by Thursday morning, India still had not officially responded to Pakistani claims to have downed the warplanes. Singh said staying silent about it makes it “very difficult to assess” the truth.

The Hindu, an Indian newspaper, deleted a social media post that said three Indian jets had been downed because there was no “on-record official information,” it said on X, amid concern from journalists that Indian media mightface government pressure if they report their findings fully.

Pakistani officials released a video Wednesday showing smoke rising from an apparent crash site. Prime Minister Sharif said Pakistani planes never entered Indian territory and shot down the aircraft only after they had “delivered their payload.” The claims could not be independently verified.

Singh, the Yale lecturer, said India’s silence could allow Pakistan to “claim a win, and maybe that could be an off-ramp” for escalation. If the reports that five aircraft have been lostare accurate, however, it would perhaps be the worst incident in Indian Air Force history, he said, tarnishing the Indian military’s reputation and casting doubt on whether it could take on powers such as China.

Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a former chairman of Pakistan’s Senate Defense Committee, said Pakistan relied on Chinese fighter jets and missile technology to counter the Indian strikes.

“Pakistan outclassed India,” he said, “with the best of Chinese military technology.”