Pakistan says it repelled Indian drone raids in ‘serious provocation’

Thursday’s apparent escalation has raised fears that the tit-for-tat exchanges between the hostile neighbours risk spiralling out of control.

Rubina Begum wails as she stands outside her house damaged by Pakistani artillery shelling at Salamabad village in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Thursday. Picture: AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Pakistan’s armed forces said it shot down 25 Indian drones over Karachi and Lahore on Thursday in what military officials warned was a “serious provocation”, a day after Indian air strikes on alleged Pakistani terror complexes sparked the worst violence between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades.

Earlier Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told a press conference on Thursday afternoon that security forces had “so far neutralised 12 Harop drones at various locations” including Lahore, a city of 13 million people, where one of the Israeli-made drones had “partially” engaged its target, wounding four army personnel.

Meanwhile India’s defence ministry confirmed late on Thursday that it had “neutralised” attempts by Pakistan to “engage” several military targets in its northern and western regions on Wednesday night and early Thursday and had targeted Pakistani air defence systems in several locations.

Amid an alarming escalation, the two nations both claimed to have caused significant casualties.

Pakistan’s Information Minister Ataullah Tarar said his country’s military had killed up to 50 Indian soldiers while Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh told political parties India’s air strikes on Pakistan killed 100 “terrorists” on Wednesday.

The US State Department said its consular staff in Lahore had been directed to shelter in place amid reports of drone explosions, downed drones and possible airspace incursions.

Just hours after reopening its airspace late on Wednesday, Pakistan was forced to suspend flights over Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad as well as the southern Punjab capital Sialkot, and cancel rail services amid what it called “another act of blatant military aggression against Pakistan”.

One of the drones appeared to have targeted a cricket stadium in the military garrison town of Rawalpindi, which was due to host a Pakistan Super League tournament tonight where Peshawar was to play Karachi.

The apparent escalation has raised fears that the tit-for-tat exchanges between the two hostile neighbours are now spiralling out of control.

New Delhi said Wednesday’s strikes destroyed known radicalisation and terrorist training centres housed inside mosque and madrasah complexes in the Punjab cities of Bahawalpur, the alleged nerve centre of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, and near Muridke which is linked to the notorious Lashkar-e-Taiba terror outfit.

Other sites hit included a mosque in Pakistan-administered Kashmir’s main town of Muzaffarabad and a hydropower plant.

Local Pakistani officials confirmed both seminaries had been largely evacuated days before the attacks in the expectation they would be in New Delhi’s sights, raising questions over whether India gave prior warning of its targets.

India says the attacks were its “right to respond” to the massacre of 26 tourists in Indian Kashmir by terrorist gunmen last month, which it says Pakistan had a hand in, an accusation Islamabad denies.

Pakistan quickly responded by scrambling air force jets that it has since claimed shot down five Indian fighter jets over Indian air space.

Intense cross-border firing continued through the night over the Line of Control separating Indian and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir — a state the two nations have been fighting over since the 1947 Partition of India — with at least 12 Indian civilians and one soldier killed, Indian officials said.

Thousands of people were also evacuated from Indian villages near the disputed border.

Ahead of Thursday’s alleged drone attacks, Pakistan appeared to be weighing up whether to respond to India’s deadly air strikes, which it said killed 31 civilians, or de-escalate.

In a fiery televised national address late on Wednesday, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed: “Every last drop of the blood of innocent Pakistani civilians killed will be avenged”. He said Pakistan’s downing of Indian fighter jets was his country’s “reply” to those attacks.

But by Thursday afternoon, General Chaudhry was warning New Delhi would “pay dearly for this naked aggression”.

“Rather than going on a path of rationality, it is further escalating in a highly charged environment to satisfy the hubristic mindset of the Indian government,” he said of the alleged drone strikes, which New Delhi had yet to confirm at the time of publication.

“The international community can visibly see the path that India is treading through this extremely provocative military aggression in a region that is right now highly fragile and putting the security of the region and beyond at risk.”

India has made no official comment about the alleged loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of sophisticated fighter jets, though security officials have privately confirmed three aircraft were lost.

A high-ranking French intelligence official also told CNN one Indian Rafale jet had been downed, possibly more.

New Delhi’s loss, while a huge embarrassment to the military, was seen as providing an off-ramp for Pakistan that allows both sides to claim a win.

The two nations national security advisers spoke late on Wednesday night, suggesting de-escalation efforts were underway.

But the odds of Islamabad taking that off-ramp appeared to have diminished significantly on Thursday.

Washington-based South Asia analyst Michael Kugelman said the ball was now very much in Pakistan’s court.

“The direction of this crisis will depend on what it does next. Will it try to reciprocate to what India did by striking India outside Jammu and Kashmir?” he told The Australian.

“If they do that then you would have a big escalation.”