India-Pakistan trade accusations as crossborder attacks continue

Amid a storm of counterclaims and disinformation, international envoys have urged both sides to pull back from the brink of war.

Indian soldiers at a market in Srinagar in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Picture: AP

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India and Pakistan traded accusations over drone attacks on military facilities across both nations on Friday amid intense crossborder shelling overnight that terrorised civilians on both sides and forced widespread blackouts across Indian Jammu and Kashmir.

Air raid sirens blasted throughout the night on the Indian side of the Line of Control dividing Kashmir between Pakistan and India, with residents in Jammu city reporting artillery fire and drones overhead.

Schools were closed in parts of Kashmir, the disputed territory that has been at the heart of several wars between India and Pakistan, and where the latest round of tensions began last month with a militant attack on Indian tourists.

T20 cricket matches in Rawalpindi and in the Indian hill station of Dharamsala were also suspended, with the Pakistan Super League announcing all remaining games would be played in the UAE.

In Kashmiri villages on both sides of the disputed border civilians counted their losses.

Sajjad Ahmed from the Indian border village of Uri said the shelling had destroyed his shop.

“This is very painful. This is like the target killing of civilians. I had come to see what I could save, but there is nothing left,” he told local media.

The Indian government said it had foiled Pakistani drone and missile attacks in more than a dozen cities and towns, including three military bases in Indian-administered Kashmir and in Punjab overnight, though just hours later explosions were reported across multiple cities in Rajasthan, causing blackouts across a swathe of north and west India.

The Indian military said it had “neutralised” the threats and had retaliated by striking Pakistan’s air defence systems and radars close to Lahore.

But Pakistan’s Defence Minister denied Islamabad was responsible for any attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, telling the BBC that when Pakistan does strike, “it will be known all over the world”.

Pakistan has accused India of continuing illegal aggression and said its forces had shot down more than two dozen Indian drones in Pakistani airspace, from the port city of Karachi in the south to Chakwal, Attock, Lahore and the garrison town of Rawalpindi in the north.

At least 48 people have been reported killed in tit-for-tat strikes, 32 of them in Pakistan and 16 in India.

Unverified claims of Indian naval attacks on Pakistan’s Karachi port, and that a Pakistani fighter jet had been downed, went viral on social media overnight on Thursday.

But Observer Research Foundation America executive director Dhruva Jaishankar told The Australian on Friday those reports, “while earlier deemed credible … appear to be unfounded and not true”.

Pakistan’s military has also claimed to have killed up to 50 Indian troops along the Line of Control, while India has refused to address Pakistan’s claims that it downed five Indian fighter jets on Wednesday, despite security officials privately conceding the loss of three.

Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, a senior fellow with the Australia Strategic Policy Institute, said that despite the recent escalation neither side could afford a prolonged conflict.

“My sense is it’s not going to escalate further beyond crossborder firing and artillery firing duals,” she said. “I think the efforts now are to calm things down rather than allow it to turn into major prolonged conflict.”

The fact the two countries’ national security advisers had reportedly begun talking was also a “positive”.

The latest clashes between the nuclear-armed rivals began early on Wednesday when India launched airstrikes on what it said were nine terrorist infrastructure sites in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and Punjab.

The airstrikes were widely anticipated after New Delhi accused Pakistan of involvement in the April 22 massacre of 26 civilians in the mountain tourist spot of Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, which Islamabad denies.

But the scale and ferocity of this latest clashes – the worst violence in two decades – has taken many by surrpise.

Saudi and Iranian diplomats have been in Pakistan, and now India, this week, trying to convince both sides to de-escalate.