On Wednesday morning, India carried out multiple missile attacks on parts of Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, in which at least 26 people were killed, including a three-year-old child.
India has claimed its Operation Sindoor targeted nine sites with “terrorist infrastructure”.
In response, Pakistan has claimed it has brought down five Indian planes – but India has not commented on this claim. At least 10 civilians have been killed in Indian-administered Kashmir due to Pakistani fire since Wednesday morning, according to local officials.
Al Jazeera visualises what has happened so far and the military capabilities of both countries.
Why did India attack Pakistan?
On Wednesday morning, Pakistan’s armed forces said Indian missiles struck six locations, including four places in Punjab province – the first time that India has hit Pakistan’s most populous state since the 1971 war between the neighbours.
The remaining two places targeted were Muzaffarabad and Kotli, both in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
India claims that it also struck a seventh location – Bhimber, also located in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The attacks are India’s response to a deadly attack on tourists on April 22, in which gunmen killed 25 tourists and a local pony rider in the scenic town of Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir. According to multiple witness accounts, the attackers separated the men from the women and tried to pick non-Muslims as their targets. The gunmen subsequently escaped, and Indian security forces are yet to find them 16 days later.
India and Pakistan tensions at a glance
In 1947, the British colonial rulers drew a line of partition, dividing the Indian subcontinent into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. What followed was one of the largest – and, perhaps, bloodiest – migrations in human history.
Seventy-eight years on, the two nations remain bitter foes. But now they have nuclear arms.
The tension between India and Pakistan has escalated sharply once again after the Pahalgam attack.
The Muslim-majority Kashmir region, a former princely state, has been in dispute since the partition of India. India, Pakistan and China each control a part of Kashmir. India claims all of it, while Pakistan claims the part administered by India.
The two countries have gone to war four times, and there have been numerous cross-border skirmishes and escalations, including one in 2019 after at least 40 Indian soldiers were killed in a suicide attack claimed by the Pakistan-based armed group, Jaish-e-Muhammad.
In retaliation, India launched air strikes in Balakot, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa later that month, claiming that its jets had struck “terrorist” bases, killing many fighters. Many independent analysts have questioned whether India actually struck bases of armed groups and whether it killed as many fighters as it claims it did.
What are the military capabilities of India and Pakistan?
According to Global Firepower’s 2025 military strength rankings, India is the fourth-strongest military power in the world, and Pakistan is ranked as the 12th strongest.
India is the fifth-largest spender in the world on military. In 2024, it spent $86bn on its military, or 2.3 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a leading defence and armaments think tank.
In comparison, Pakistan spent $10.2bn, or 2.7 percent of its GDP, on the military in 2024.
India’s total military strength is 5,137,550 personnel, which is almost three times larger than Pakistan’s 1,704,000. Neither country has mandatory conscription.
India possesses 2,229 military aircraft, compared with Pakistan’s 1,399.
India has 3,151 combat tanks, compared with Pakistan’s 1,839.
Pakistan’s navy covers its 1,046 kilometre-long (650-mile) southern coastal borders in the Arabian Sea and possesses 121 naval assets, while India’s mainland coast covers nearly 6,100km (3,800 miles) with 293 naval assets.
India and Pakistan’s nuclear arms race
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICANW), a global coalition to ban nuclear weapons, in 2023, countries spent an estimated $91.4bn on nuclear weapons, with India spending $2.7bn and Pakistan $1bn.
India carried out its first nuclear test in May 1974, and in May 1998, conducted another five tests, declaring itself a nuclear weapons state.
Pakistan carried out its first nuclear tests shortly after India’s in 1998, officially becoming a nuclear weapons state.
Since then, the two born together, star-crossed nations have been engaged in an arms race that has cost them billions of dollars.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Missile Defence Project, New Delhi nuclear deterrents are mainly aimed at rivals Pakistan and China. India has developed longer range missiles and mobile land-based missiles. In conjunction with Russia, it is in the developing stages for ship and submarine missiles.
The CSIS also states that Pakistan’s arsenal consists primarily of mobile short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, which have enough of a range to target India. China’s significant technical assistance on its nuclear and missile programmes has helped Pakistan in recent years.
Who supplies arms to India and Pakistan?
According to SIPRI, the cross-border tensions between the two nations fuel arms imports by both countries.
India was the second-largest arms importer from 2020-2024, after Ukraine, bearing an 8.3 percent share of global imports. The majority of India’s imports come from Russia, although it has been shifting its arms sourcing to France, Israel and the United States.
Across the border, Pakistan’s arms and weapons imports increased by 61 percent between 2015–19 and 2020–24 as it started to receive deliveries, including combat aircraft and warships. On a global scale, Pakistan is the fifth-largest arms importer with 4.6 percent imports in 2020–24.
Since 1990, Pakistan’s main supplier has been China. China supplied 81 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports in 2020–24; Russia supplied 36 percent of India’s arms during the same period.
