India-Pakistan crisis: what we know so far

India has conducted what it has described as “precision strikes” in neighbouring Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, days after it blamed Islamabad for a deadly attack on the Indian side of the contested region that killed 26 people.

Twenty-six people, including a child, were killed in the overnight missile strikes and 46 others have been injured, according to a Pakistani military spokesperson.

The Indian government said in a statement that nine non-military targets had been hit in the strikes, in what it called “Operation Sindoor.” India said it struck nine Pakistani “terrorist infrastructure” sites, some of them linked to the attack by Islamist militants in Indian Kashmir last month. Pakistan has refuted this, saying none of the targets were militant camps.

New Delhi said its actions had been “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”. It had displayed “considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution”, it added. The Indian army, in a video on X, said “justice is served.”

Both countries also exchanged intense shelling and heavy gunfire across much of their de facto border in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, police and witnesses told Reuters. Indian police and medics have said at least seven civilians were killed and 30 others wounded by Pakistani firing and shelling overnight.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif said the “deceitful enemy has carried out cowardly attacks at five locations in Pakistan” and that his country would retaliate. “Pakistan has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong response is indeed being given,” Sharif said.

Sharif has convened a meeting of the National Security Committee for Wednesday morning. He said his country and its forces “know very well how to deal with the enemy. . … We will never let the enemy succeed in its nefarious objectives.”

Pakistan says five Indian air force jets were shot down, a claim not confirmed by India. However, four local government sources in Indian Kashmir told Reuters that three fighter jets had crashed in separate areas of the region during the night.

The United Nations has called for maximum restraint from both India and Pakistan. “The secretary-general [António Guterres] is very concerned about the Indian military operations across the Line of Control and international border. He calls for maximum military restraint from both countries,” the spokesperson said. “The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan.”

The development marks a dramatic escalation in the long-simmering conflict between the neighbouring nuclear powers. Bilateral ties between the two countries plummeted after gunmen killed 26 mainly Hindu civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

Cross-border exchanges of fire started two days after that attack at a small meadow near Pahalgam in Indian-controlled part of the territory, with gunfire exchanged nightly since 24 April along the de facto border in Kashmir.

The two sides also announced sweeping tit-for-tat punitive diplomatic sanctions – including cancelling visas for each other’s citizens.

Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, on Tuesday warned that water from India flowing into neighbouring countries including Pakistan would be stopped, days after suspending a key water treaty with Islamabad.