India launched a series of airstrikes overnight Tuesday into Wednesday on targets inside Pakistani territory, in the largest cross-border military operation in decades between the two nuclear-armed powers. According to New Delhi, the strikes targeted infrastructure linked to militant Islamist groups accused of organizing recent attacks against Indian civilians, particularly in Kashmir.
One of the main targets, a residential religious seminary near Bahawalpur in central Pakistan, was hit by a missile, killing 13 people, including ten members of the family of the founder of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, Masood Azhar. Five children, Azhar's sister, and her husband were among the dead, according to the Pakistani military. The organization denounced Indian "brutality," saying the strikes violated "all norms." Azhar and his brother, senior leaders of the group, were not present at the scene.
Further north, in Muridke, near Lahore, four missiles were fired at a compound that India claims is linked to the internationally banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, accused by New Delhi and Washington of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attack. A mosque and an administrative building were destroyed, killing three people. According to local authorities, the site normally housed several thousand students and staff, but had been largely evacuated due to rising tensions.
India claimed responsibility for destroying nine "terrorist camps" associated with the two groups, saying the facilities were at the heart of a network organized by Islamabad for more than 26 years to foment attacks on its territory. Pakistan, for its part, reported six sites hit, 46 civilians killed and XNUMX injured, rejecting any military involvement and promising a response.
These strikes, carried out in retaliation for an attack in Indian-held Kashmir that killed 26 tourists in April, mark a significant escalation in the Indo-Pakistani conflict. Until now, clashes between the two states had been confined mainly to the disputed region of Kashmir. The strikes in Bahawalpur and Muridke have raised fears that the conflict could spread beyond this historically sensitive area.
Pakistan denies any involvement in terrorist activities and regularly accuses India of supporting separatists in Balochistan, a claim New Delhi strongly denies. As tensions remain high, the international community fears a new spiral of violence between two nuclear-armed powers.
