Cliff Notes – India will ‘pay price’ for missile strikes
- Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, vowed retaliation against India for a missile strike that killed at least 31 civilians, asserting that India “will now have to pay the price” for its actions.
- India’s military claimed the strikes targeted sites linked to terrorism, while Pakistan contended that no militant camps were hit and reported ongoing crossfire along the Line of Control.
- Calls for de-escalation have emerged from international figures, including Donald Trump and Malala Yousafzai, urging India and Pakistan to engage in dialogue to prevent further conflict.
India will ‘pay price’ for missile strikes, Pakistan PM warns
Pakistan’s prime minister has pledged to retaliate after India’s deadly missile strike, saying the country will “now have to pay the price” for their “blatant mistake”.
In a televised address on state broadcaster PTV, Shehbaz Sharif responded to Wednesday’s attack in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistan-administered parts of Kashmir, which a military spokesperson said had killed at least 31 civilians and wounded 46.
“For the blatant mistake that India made last night, it will now have to pay the price,” he said.
“Perhaps they thought that we would retreat, but they forgot that… this is a nation of brave people.”
India said it struck nine Pakistani sites that provided “terrorist infrastructure”, which India said was the source of attacks against it. India’s defence minister claimed no civilian population was impacted.
Islamabad insisted that none of the locations targeted in Pakistan were militant camps.
On Thursday morning, Pakistan’s army spokesman, Lt Gen Ahmad Sharif, said an Indian drone wounded four soldiers and partially damaged a military target near Lahore overnight, while the country’s air defence system intercepted and shot down 12 Indian drones that entered Pakistani airspace at various locations.
He added that in the southern province of Sindh, one civilian was killed and another wounded when debris from downed drones fell in a populated area.
India explained its original strikes were in retaliation for the terrorist attack on 22 April, in which at least 26 people were shot dead by gunmen at a beauty spot near the resort town of Pahalgam in the India-administered part of Kashmir.
Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both sides claim in full and control in part.
Indian forces attacked facilities linked to Islamist militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, two Indian military spokespeople told a briefing in New Delhi, in what New Delhi called “Operation Sindoor”.
Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri said the strikes were to pre-empt further attacks on India.
Pakistan’s military says exchanges of fire continued late Wednesday along the Line of Control, the border between it and India in Kashmir.
Pakistan also claimed it shot down several Indian aircraft on Wednesday, including three fighter jets that fell in India-administered Kashmir and India’s northern Punjab state.