India and Pakistan exchanged intense artillery fire across their disputed border on Wednesday, marking the most severe escalation between the nuclear-armed rivals in two decades, following deadly missile strikes by New Delhi.
The clashes resulted in at least 34 reported fatalities, with Islamabad claiming 26 civilian deaths from Indian strikes and shelling, while New Delhi reported at least eight casualties from Pakistani artillery fire.
The confrontation erupted just days after New Delhi accused Islamabad of supporting a deadly attack in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir.
This recent escalation surpasses the scale of India’s 2019 strikes, when it claimed to have targeted “several militant camps” in response to a suicide bombing that killed 40 Indian paramilitary personnel.
The Indian army declared the operation a success, stating that nine “terrorist camps” had been destroyed, adding that the strikes were “focused, measured, and non-escalatory.”
In response, Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using the military action to boost his domestic support, while asserting that Islamabad had retaliated accordingly.
Pakistani military spokesman Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry claimed that five Indian jets were shot down along the border, while an unnamed senior Indian security source reported that three Indian fighter jets had crashed within Indian territory.
An AFP photographer captured images of the wreckage of one jet at Wuyan, in the Indian-controlled side of Kashmir.
In Muzaffarabad, the main city in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, troops sealed off streets near a mosque that Islamabad said had been struck in the attacks, with blast scars visible on nearby homes.
Pakistan reported that 21 civilians, including four children, were killed in the strikes, with an additional five fatalities resulting from cross-border gunfire.
India’s army, however, accused Pakistan of “indiscriminate” shelling across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border separating the two sides in the contested Kashmir region.
“We woke up as we heard the sound of firing”, Farooq, a man in the Indian town of Poonch, told the Press Trust of India news agency from his hospital bed, his head wrapped in a bandage.
“I saw shelling raining down.”
AFP reporters in the town saw bursts of flame as shells landed.
