MUZAFFARABAD: Residents of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Azad Kashmir, said they fled their homes and ran into surrounding hills as India launched airstrikes early on Wednesday in a part of the city.

Mosque loudspeakers told people to seek shelter as the ground shook repeatedly and the sounds of explosions reverberated, they said.

“We came outside,” said Muhammad Shair Mir, 46, describing the events of the night. “Then another blast happened. The whole house moved. Everyone got scared, we all evacuated, took our kids and went up (the hill).”

Many people gathered after sunrise near a mosque that had been hit in the strikes, its roof smashed and minaret toppled. Security forces had cordoned off the area.

The district commissioner, a senior local official, said three people were killed near the collapsed mosque. In total, Pakistan’s military said 26 people were killed and 46 wounded in Indian attacks across Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir, which is called Azad Kashmir.

India launched the strikes early on Wednesday, saying it was targeting “terrorist camps” that served as recruitment centers, launchpads, and indoctrination centers, and housed weapons and training facilities.

Pakistan called it a “blatant act of war” as tensions spiraled between the nuclear-armed rivals after a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen on tourists in Indian Kashmir. It said none of the targeted areas were militant camps.

District officials said that at the Line of Control that divides Pakistani and Indian Kashmir, mortar and light arms fire between the two armies continued into the morning and had killed at least six civilians on the Pakistani side.

Police in Indian Kashmir said at least 10 people were killed and nearly 50 injured there.

In Muzaffarabad, hospitals were operational and some small businesses opened in the morning but schools were closed and examinations canceled, according to local authorities.

Shair Mir said he and his family spent four hours in the open. Some of his neighbors had gone to hospital with injuries and the rest were shaken, he said.

“This is wrong ... poor innocent people, our poor mothers are sick, our sisters are sick .. our houses were rattled, our walls have cracked,” he said.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday the country’s top national security body had authorized its armed forces to take “corresponding actions” in response to Indian strikes inside Pakistani territory in which 26 civilians were killed overnight. 

In the sharpest military escalation in more than two decades between the nuclear-armed rivals, the Indian government said it struck nine Pakistani “terrorist infrastructure” sites involved in planning a deadly attack in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22. The assault took place on the tourist hill station of Pahalgam in the part of Kashmir governed by India, with 26 men killed. 

The Pakistani military said six locations across its territory — Ahmedpur East, Muridke, Sialkot, Shakargarh in the eastern province of Punjab and Kotli and Muzaffarabad in Azad Kashmir — were targeted. Azad Kashmir is the part of the disputed Kashmir valley that is administered by Pakistan. 

In response, Pakistan military spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said five Indian planes and one combat drone that had attacked Pakistan were shot down, naming three Rafales and an MiG-29 and Su-57 each.

“In consonance with Article-51 of the UN Charter, 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,” PM Sharif’s office said in a statement after he chaired a meeting of the National Security Committee, referring to the right of self-defense according to Chapter VII, Article 51, of the UN Charter.

“The Armed Forces of Pakistan have duly been authorized to undertake corresponding actions in this regard.”

The statement added that India, “against all sanity and rationality, has once again ignited an inferno in the region,” saying the responsibility for ensuing consequences lay squarely with New Delhi. 

Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the Chargé d’Affaires had been summoned “to receive Pakistan’s strong protest over the unprovoked Indian strikes.”

“The Indian side was warned that such reckless behavior poses a serious threat to regional peace and stability.”

“TERRORIST CAMPS”

In New Delhi, two Indian military spokespersons told a briefing Indian forces had attacked facilities linked to militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba. Pakistani officials say India only hit civilian infrastructure. 

The strikes targeted “terrorist camps” that served as recruitment centers, launchpads, and indoctrination centers, and housed weapons and training facilities, the Indian spokespersons said.

They said Indian forces used niche technology weapons and carefully chose warheads to avoid collateral damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure, but did not elaborate on the specifics or methods used in the strikes.

“Intelligence and monitoring of Pakistan-based terror modules showed that further attacks against India were impending, therefore it was necessary to take pre-emptive and precautionary strikes,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, the top official in its external affairs ministry, told the briefing.

The joint briefing by the Indian military and foreign ministry listed past attacks in India blamed on Pakistan, with Misri saying Pakistan had not done anything to “terrorist infrastructure” after the Pahalgam attack, which triggered the latest standoff. 

Pakistan had denied involvement in the attack and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had offered to be part of any credible and transparent investigation.

Kashmir has been disputed between India and Pakistan since 1947. Both rule it in part and claim it in full and have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants involved in a separatist insurgency in its part of Kashmir since 1989, which Islamabad denies, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.

The current confrontation is reminiscent of the last major military standoff between the two nations in 2019, when an Indian airstrike in the northwestern town of Balakot was followed by Pakistani retaliatory action, including the downing of an Indian fighter jet and the capture of its pilot, who was later released in a gesture of goodwill.

On Wednesday morning, the South Asian neighbors also exchanged intense shelling and heavy gunfire across much of their de facto border called the Line of Control, which divides disputed Kashmir between them. 

The shelling across the frontier in Kashmir killed 10 civilians and injured 48 in the Indian part of the region, police there told media. At least six people were killed on the Pakistani side, Reuters reported, quoting officials.

Four local government sources in Indian-administered Kashmir told Reuters three fighter jets had crashed in separate areas of the Himalayan region during the night. Indian defense ministry officials have not officially confirmed the report.

– With inputs from Reuters