Pakistan confirms counterattack against India has begun
Pakistan officials have confirmed its counterattack against India has started under the name Operation Bunyan Ul Marsoos, meaning “wall of lead” in Arabic.
As our newly updated full report says, Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes – after accusing India of targeting three of its military bases – are a major escalation of the brewing conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Pakistan’s military spokesperson said in a live broadcast on state television early on Saturday that India had targeted Nur Khan base, Murid base and Shorkot base.
Shah Meer Baloch and Hannah Ellis-Petersen report that Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, where the military has its headquarters, is about 10km from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Video shared on social media showed flames and smoke billowing into the night sky.
The early morning strikes on Nur Khan in Rawalpindi, a densely populated area, caused mass panic, with residents running into the streets.
India’s attempted strikes on Rawalpindi and other key military bases – and the launch of Pakistan’s counterattack on Saturday – marks the steepest escalation in their confrontation yet, bringing the two countries the closest they have been to war in decades.
See the full report here:
Key events
The Indian army said on Saturday that Pakistan was continuing its “blatant escalation” with drone strikes and using other munitions along India’s western border, and its “enemy designs” would be thwarted, according to a report from Reuters.
Multiple “enemy armed drones” spotted over the holy city of Amritsar in India’s border state of Punjab were “instantly engaged and destroyed” by Indian air defence units, the army said in a post on X.
Here are some of the latest images coming in from the region over the news wires.
Rubio urges de-escalation, speaks with Pakistani army chief
The US secretary of state has urged India and Pakistan to find ways to de-escalate their conflict, the state department said.
Marco Rubio spoke earlier on Saturday with Pakistan’s army chief, Gen Asim Munir, it also said.
Reuters reports that Rubio offered US assistance to start constructive talks to avoid future conflicts, according to the state department.
PM convenes meeting of Pakistani body controlling nuclear weapons
Shah Meer Baloch
Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has convened a crucial meeting of the National Command Authority amid the escalating conflict with India.
The authority is the main body that makes decisions on the control, command and operations of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Usually a meeting of the authority is convened only in a war-like situation to discuss nuclear matters.
Pakistan’s planning and development minister, Ahsan Iqbal, told Reuters: “We would hate to see the nuclear threshold being breached.”
Summary
Here’s a recap from Kate Lamb of what we know about the latest key developments in the intensifying India-Pakistan conflict.
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Pakistan launched a retaliatory military operation against India early on Saturday, its military said, targeting multiple bases including a missile storage site in northern India as the nuclear-armed neighbours extended their worst fighting in nearly three decades.
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Pakistan military officials told state-run media the Pathankot military airfield in Punjab and Udhampur air force base in Indian-administered Kashmir were among the targets, with loud explosions heard from both. Officials said the operation was called Operation Bunyan Ul Marsoos, an Arabic phrase meaning “wall of lead”.
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Pakistan’s offensive came shortly after it said India had fired missiles from fighter jets at three air bases earlier on Saturday, including one close to the capital, Islamabad. Pakistani said its air defences had intercepted most of them.
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Among the targets was Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani military has its headquarters, which is around 10km from Islamabad. The strikes caused panic in the densely populated area, with loud explosions sending residents running into the streets. In the aftermath of the strikes, Pakistan shut down its air space.
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Following Saturday’s strikes, Pakistan prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, called a meeting of the National Command Authority, the military said. The authority is the top body of civilian and military officials that takes security decisions including those related to the country’s nuclear arsenal.
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India’s attempted strikes on Rawalpindi and other key military bases – and the launch of Pakistan’s counter-attack on Saturday – marks the steepest escalation in their confrontation yet, bringing the two countries the closest they have been to war in decades.
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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.
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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.
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The dramatic flare up comes after a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month, when 26 civilians were killed. India has accused Pakistan of supporting militants behind the attack.
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India’s defence and foreign ministries did not immediately comment on the strikes, but India’s military said it had actively begun large-scale mobilisation of additional forces to the border, including activating its reserve territorial army (TA), to ensure full operational strength of the army in the event of any further conflict escalation.
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The G7 has called for an “immediate de-escalation” and “maximum restraint” between India and Pakistan amid the flaring conflict. “Further military escalation poses a serious threat to regional stability,” G7 foreign ministers said in a statement on Saturday.
Shah Meer Baloch
Pakistan’s foreign minister has said Pakistan has all options available.
Ishaq Dar, who is also deputy prime minister, told Geo News the world was watching and Pakistan had given the response.
India had left Pakistan with no choice, Dar said. The international community and friendly countries knew that Islamabad had taken this decision as a last resort.
Dar said:
In the earlier Indian attacks, our 35 civilians were killed. Hours ago, India had attacked our air force bases. We had done everything on a defensive mode and we were forced to retaliate.
It is the responsibility of the international community to play their role and they should have played their role when India had attacked Pakistan days ago and killed civilians. We showed so much restraint.
Looking now at India and Pakistan’s military might along the contested Kashmir border, the Indian army is about double the size of Pakistan’s but the two sides are “fairly evenly balanced”, says Sushant Singh, an author and political science lecturer at Yale who spent two decades in the Indian army.
There are about 1.2 million active Indian personnel compared with about 650,000 for Pakistan, Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer Baloch report. Their dispatch continues:
Singh emphasised that, since 2020, India had deployed huge amounts of military personnel and resources towards its mountainous border with China, after the India-China border crisis swiftly escalated. India has also had issues with the modernisation of its armed forces and faced a systematic recruitment problem, leading to a shortfall of soldiers.
“Despite its size, India doesn’t have the kind of dominance where you would expect India to easily ride roughshod over Pakistan or declare a quick win,” said Singh.
The question of who would have the edge in any confrontation is also a question of equipment. In recent years, India has been shifting away from its reliance on Russian weapons to buying western munitions, including elite French Rafale jet planes and F-16 jets from the US. Pakistan now buys 80% of its military arsenal from China.
According to reports, as tensions with India rose last month, China rushed 100 more of its powerful new PL-15 missiles to Pakistan, which it usually keeps for its own inventory and does not export.
On Friday, the Pakistan army claimed it used the PL-15 missiles to bring down several Indian jets during Wednesday’s strikes. Shuja Nawaz, the author of Crossed Swords and a known expert on Pakistan’s military, said this showed that “China is not only helping Pakistan, but it is using it as a kind of testing ground for its weaponry against India”.
For more context on today’s sharp escalation of the India-Pakistan conflict, the fighting comes two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing an attack on the Indian-run side of disputed Kashmir that killed 26 tourists, mostly Hindu men.
India blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba – a UN-designated terrorist organisation – for the attack but Pakistan has denied any involvement and called for an independent inquiry, reports Agence France-Presse.
The countries have fought several wars over the Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both claim in full but administer separate portions of since gaining independence from British rule in 1947.
Previous clashes have been mostly limited to the Kashmir region – separated by a heavily militarised border known as the line of control – but this time India has struck multiple cities deep in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry alleged New Delhi’s “reckless conduct has brought the two nuclear-armed states closer to a major conflict”.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, met top security officials on Friday, including his national security advisor, defence minister and the chiefs of the armed forces, his office said.
India starts large mobilisation of extra troops to border, says military
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
The Indian military says it has actively begun large-scale mobilisation of additional forces to the border, including activating its reserve territorial army (TA), to ensure full operational strength of the army in the event of any further conflict escalation.
In a notification on Friday amid the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, the Indian ministry of defence announced the activation of 14 of 32 infantry battalions of the TA for deployment across the country until February 2028.
Each TA battalion has about 750 personnel.
Shah Meer Baloch
The Pakistani military has posted a video on X of its first military strike against India that was launched before dawn after Indian missile attacks on Pakistan’s three air force bases.
A senior security source requesting anonymity said Pakistan was left with no choice to take retaliatory actions after it was forced by Indian military aggression but that the early morning attacks on the Pakistani air bases were unprecedented.
The security official said:
Indian missile attacks were a very serious escalation. It is unprecedented. We have not seen such escalation since the 1971 war with India. We have been defensive since the start of the conflict, but India now wants to become offensive. We have given our response.
