PAKISTAN said India fired missiles at three air bases early on Saturday including one close to the capital, Islamabad, but Pakistani air defences intercepted most of them as the neighbours extended their worst fighting in nearly three decades.
Reuters reported today that locked in a longstanding dispute over Kashmir, the two countries have engaged in daily clashes since Wednesday when India launched strikes inside Pakistan on what it called militant bases. Pakistan vowed to retaliate.
"India through its planes, launched air to surface missiles... Nur Khan base, Mureed base, and Shorkot base were made targets," Pakistan military spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a late-night televised statement.
One of the air bases is in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which just outside the capital Islamabad, and the other two are in Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab, which neighbours India.
The Pakistani military spokesman said only a few missiles made it past air defences, and those did not hit any "air assets," according to initial damage assessments.
India's defence and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.
India said its strikes on Wednesday were retaliation for a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month.
Pakistan denied India's accusations that it was involved in the tourist attack. Since Wednesday, the two countries have exchanged cross-border fire and shelling, and they have sent drones and missiles into each other's airspace.
Much of the fighting on Friday was in Indian Kashmir and neighbouring Indian states. India said it shot down Pakistani drones.
At least 48 people have been killed since Wednesday, according to casualty estimates on both sides of the border that have not been independently verified.
Meanwhile, Xinhua reported today that Pakistan on Saturday launched an offensive operation against India amid continuous provocation, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistan army, said in a statement.
The ISPR said the operation "Bunyanun Marsoos," meaning concrete structure, has been initiated and that multiple targets are being engaged all across India, the ISPR statement said.
The ISPR said that an air base in Udhampur in Indian-controlled Kashmir has been destroyed, adding that an airfield in Pathankot district of India's Punjab province has also been targeted and destroyed.
Meanwhile, attacks on various other places are in progress.
Official sources told Xinhua that the BrahMos missile storage facility in the Indian city of Beas had been reportedly destroyed in the initial strike.
The development came after India launched air-to-surface missiles at three air bases in Pakistan, a spokesperson for the Pakistani army said in the wee hours of Saturday.
Earlier this week, the director general of the ISPR said that at least 31 people were killed and 57 others injured in an Indian attack on Pakistani territory and subsequent exchanges of fire between Pakistani and Indian troops along the Line of Control, the de facto border between the two neighbors. - May 10, 2025
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