Tensions escalate as Pakistan calls India’s operation ‘an act of war’

India hit multiple targets across Pakistan in the most widespread strikes in decades early Wednesday.

New Delhi described its operation as a response to a deadly attack in India-administered Kashmir on April 22, when gunmen killed at least 26 tourists and injured a dozen others. India argued the group that claimed responsibility was a proxy for the Pakistani military. Pakistan denies any connection.

Pakistani government called Wednesday’s strikes as “an act of war.” And according to The Associated Press, citing the Pakistani military, 31 people have been killed.

India’s military said the strikes, which occurred overnight Wednesday local time, as targeting “terrorist infrastructure.” It said in a statement the strikes were “focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature” and that no Pakistani military facilities were targeted. Later, Indian Col. Sofia Qureishi said in a news briefing “locations were so selected to avoid damage to civilian infrastructures and loss of any civilian lives.”

It appeared the deadliest strikes hit a mosque in the southern Pakistani town of Ahmedpur East. Those strikes killed 14 people, including members of the family of Masood Azhar, the chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a U.S.-designated terrorist group that has conducted deadly attacks in India in the past.

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for restraint from both countries. “The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan,” he said in a statement.

About half of the Indian strikes targeted locations in Pakistani-held Kashmir. India and Pakistan both administer parts of Kashmir, and both claim the entire territory for themselves.

Pakistan said one target was a hydropower dam on a river. That attack in particular raised hackles, because last month, India suspended its decades-old water treaty with Pakistan that divides six rivers between the two water-stressed countries. The suspension was part of a series of measures India announced following the militant attack in April. Pakistan’s representative to the U.N., Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, earlier said the treaty’s suspension posed “an existential threat to the people of Pakistan.”

In Kotli, a town in Pakistani-held Kashmir, the sound of multiple airstrikes sent students scattering from popular late-night food hubs. One projectile struck a house close to a mosque, which residents say is affiliated with the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed. The strike killed a 19-year-old university student and her 12-year-old brother, according to Muhammad Nasrullah Khan, a medical official at the local hospital.

Other strikes landed in Pakistan’s Punjab province, including in a town called Murikde, some 30 miles from Lahore, the country’s second largest city. India has not struck that deep in Pakistan since 1971, said Michael Kugelman, an expert on the region who writes Foreign Policy’s South Asia brief. “What also stands out about these recent strikes is the scale and intensity of them,” he told NPR.

Indian authorities held dozens of emergency drills across the country to prepare its first responders for conflict. Volunteers rappelled from the top of a building as sirens went off and firecrackers erupted — apparently to imitate shelling in one drill in the Indian port city of Mumbai. Drills in the India’s capital New Delhi temporarily plunged the Parliament and several top government offices in darkness.

After the strikes, Pakistan’s most senior officials met and described India’s actions as “unprovoked, cowardly and unlawful act of war” in a statement released by the prime minister’s office. “Pakistan reserves the right to respond, in self-defense, at a time, place, and manner of its choosing to avenge the loss of innocent Pakistani lives and blatant violation of its sovereignty,” it said.

Pakistan’s military already appears stretched. It is fighting a Pakistani offshoot of the Taliban along its northwestern border. It is also battling an increasingly violent, and brazen insurgency in its western province of Baluchistan. Pakistan claims those separatists are backed by Indian intelligence. Just hours before the Indian strikes, Pakistan’s military said separatist fighters struck an army vehicle with an improvised landmine, killing 7 soldiers. “Nefarious designs of India and its proxies operating on Pakistani soil will be defeated,” the military statement said.

Praveen Donthi, senior analyst for India with International Crisis Group, said outside parties should have intervened more forcefully to prevent military strikes. “This should have been stopped before it escalated,” Donthi said.

While India has signaled that it does not seek an escalation, “the Pakistan establishment will be under tremendous pressure” to respond, Donthi said, because of the death toll and the widespread nature of the strikes. “I’m afraid if the international community doesn’t step in, especially the U.S., then we are only seeing the beginning of these escalatory strikes.”

Following the strikes, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “monitoring the situation between India and Pakistan closely.” President Trump earlier told journalists that the attacks were “a shame.”

“I just hope that it ends very quickly,” he said.

Diaa Hadid reporting from Mumbai, India; Bilal Kuchay in Pampore, Indian-administered Kashmir; Betsy Joles in Lahore, Pakistan. NPR producer Omkar Khandekar in Mumbai contributed reporting.