By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

India and Pakistan Edge Closer to War

One should also add that Pakistan and China have a close and long-standing cooperative relationship, characterized by strong strategic, economic, and military ties. This cooperation is exemplified by initiatives like the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which focuses on infrastructure development and trade. China is a significant trading partner and source of imports for Pakistan.

Early Saturday, May 5, Pakistan’s armed forces said they targeted military sites inside India in response to an Indian missile attack at three air bases in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Hours later, India said its attack, which it claimed had hit four military bases in Pakistan, was in response to Pakistan attacking its civilian infrastructure.

Before Pakistan’s military action early Saturday, Pakistan’s chief military spokesman, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said India had targeted Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, Murid air base in Chakwal, and Rafiqui air base near Shorkot with air-to-surface missiles. Most of the missiles, he said in a later appearance, were intercepted, and there were no casualties or damage.

India’s actions, he said, were “pushing the whole region toward dangerous war,” and vowed a firm response. The media wing of Pakistan’s military, soon after, said the armed forces were targeting Indian military sites and claimed to have struck multiple locations.

The Indian government dismissed Pakistan’s claims of destruction of Indian military capacities, including damage to the country’s critical infrastructure such as power systems, as “completely false,” according to India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri. “It is Pakistani actions that have constituted provocation and escalation,” he said in a late morning news briefing.

But some tentative signs emerged Saturday that tensions could ease. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said his country would be willing to de-escalate tensions with India if they stopped further attacks. “If they stop this, then we will consider stopping also,” he told Pakistan’s Geo News. But if India attacks again, he said, “get ready for our next response.”

In India’s late morning briefing, Wing Commander Vyomika Singh said the Indian armed forces reiterate “their commitment to non-escalation” if it is “reciprocated” by Pakistan’s military. In a call with Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “continued to urge both parties to find ways to de-escalate and offered U.S. assistance in starting constructive talks,” said State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce. A Pakistani official said the call took place after Pakistan began hitting Indian targets on Saturday morning.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing operation. India’s external affairs minister S. Jaishankar said he talked with Marco Rubio, the United States Secretary of State, on Saturday morning. in a post on X.Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, said one government official was killed after his home was hit by shelling from Pakistan.

An Indian paramilitary soldier stands guard at a temporary checkpoint on a road leading to the airport after loud explosions were heard in Srinagar, in Indian controlled Kashmir, Saturday, May 10, 2025.

Michael Kugelman, a D.C.-based South Asia analyst, said it was noteworthy that Pakistani retaliation to the Indian strikes overnight was almost immediate. This suggests that “Pakistan has been waiting to carry out some type of military response that would be proportionate” to India’s initial Wednesday strike that killed more than 20 people, he said. “The Indian missile attacks have made Pakistan’s decision easier,” Kugelman said.

Over four nights of conflict, each country has portrayed the other as the aggressor, trading blame for civilians coming under fire along the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, and for apparent drone and missile attacks. Foreign ministers of the Group of Seven nations on Friday issued a call for de-escalation and said the two countries should “engage in direct dialogue towards a peaceful outcome.”

A Kashmiri villager and a rescue worker examine damage to a house caused by overnight Indian shelling in Shah Kot, in Neelum Valley, a district of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, on Saturday, May 10.

On Friday, Pakistan’s military said it had shot down a total of 77 drones in the conflict, while India’s Defense Ministry said Pakistan targeted 36 locations, including civilian infrastructure, with up to 400 drones — many of which it claimed to have shot down. India said some of its soldiers had been killed, without providing further details.

The latest conflict began early Wednesday when India conducted airstrikes inside Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir in response to a deadly militant attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month. India said that the attack had links to Pakistan, which it has long accused of harboring violent Kashmiri separatists; Islamabad denied any involvement and has called for an international investigation.

Diplomats from countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar have tried to ease pressure between New Delhi and Islamabad but have been seemingly unsuccessful in their efforts. The United States and China have called for diplomatic solutions, but it remains unclear who would lead those efforts.

Washington has also given mixed signals about its desire to get involved. In a Thursday night interview with Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said the U.S. wants de-escalation but emphasized that it is “fundamentally none of our business.”

A man helps his child to board an overcrowded train at the Jammu Tawi railway station in Jammu, Indian-administered Kashmir, on Saturday, amid rising tensions between India and Pakistan

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt struck a different tone in her Friday briefing, saying President Donald Trump wanted to see the conflict “de-escalate as quickly as possible.”

Details are still emerging, but Saturday’s escalation may not immediately result in full-blown war, said Sushant Singh, a Yale lecturer and former Indian military official.

The government of India has not officially started a process to mobilize for war, and the attacks between the two countries are seemingly limited to air battles and do not involve branches such as the navy, he said. However, Singh noted that both sides are ratcheting up tensions because military sites are starting to be claimed as targets, especially air defense systems.

The stakes for the two nuclear-armed nations are high. Pakistani officials said early Saturday that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had called a meeting Saturday of the National Command Authority, which oversees Pakistan’s strategic assets, including its nuclear arsenal. But Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif later said no such meeting has been scheduled.

“There is no real historical precedent for what we’re seeing unfold,” said Asfandyar Mir, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, a D.C.-based think tank. “We are now at a critical height on the escalation ladder.”

The fighting between India and Pakistan intensified sharply on Saturday with both sides targeting air bases and blaming each other for striking first, as the United States again called on both sides to de-escalate.

Pakistan said India had targeted at least three of its air bases with air-to-surface missiles in the early hours of Saturday, including Nur Khan, a key air force installation near the capital, Islamabad. Witnesses in the city of Rawalpindi, where Nur Khan is located, reported hearing at least three loud explosions, with one describing a “large fireball” visible from miles away.

Within hours, Pakistan said it had retaliated using short-range surface-to-surface missiles against several locations in India, including the Udhampur and Pathankot air bases and a missile storage facility. “An eye for an eye,” the Pakistani military said in a statement.

India, however, also described its action on Saturday as retaliation. The Indian military said it had struck several Pakistani military targets, two of them radar sites, in response to a wave of Pakistani attacks on 26 locations using drones, long-range weapons, and fighter planes. There was “limited damage” to equipment and personnel at four Indian air force bases, Vyomika Singh, an Indian Air Force officer, said at a news conference on Saturday.

 

Locations officials say were targeted

Pakistani and Indian officials said these sites were targeted by strikes on Saturday. It was not clear how many of the attacks were successful.

“It is Pakistani actions that have constituted provocation and escalation,” said India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri. “In response, India has defended and reacted in a responsible and measured fashion.”

Amid the claims and counterclaims, it was clear that the night involved some of the heaviest military engagement from both sides since India conducted airstrikes on Pakistan on Wednesday. India has accused Pakistan of harboring terrorist groups that carried out a deadly attack on tourists last month in India-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan has denied involvement.

Both countries say that they want to de-escalate, but the crisis has spiraled into the most expansive confrontation between the two nations in a century, with fierce fighting along sections of their border and drone attacks and other strikes hitting deeper within each country.

Paramilitary soldiers patrolling in Dal Lake after loud explosions were heard in Srinagar, in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir, on Saturday.

A former U.S. Army colonel said it was the “most violent and concerning escalation” he could recall in the longstanding conflict between the two nations.

Now a senior executive at the private security firm, also said that they focus mostly on military targets, and “parity in the types, levels and locations of attacks reflects that both sides are deliberately calibrating their responses,” making him cautiously optimistic. “Neither side is going for a strategic escalatory ‘kill shot.’”

India and Pakistan became separate countries in 1947 and have fought three wars, with disputes over Kashmir figuring in each. One of those wars, in December 1971, established the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir. But India and Pakistan are separated by an international border of around 2,000 miles, and in this conflict, each is targeting sites far beyond Kashmir.

Each military response has taken a toll on people living close to border areas; dozens of civilians have died, dozens have been injured, and many homes have been damaged.

Security personnel cordoned off a road near Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, on Saturday.

A politician from the Kashmiri border town of Rajouri said four people died in his neighborhood after being hit by artillery fire that started on Friday night and continued into Saturday. Like many others in the area, he is used to shelling, but earlier episodes did not last very long. “This time, it was very long and intense.”

The intensifying crisis has prompted alarm worldwide and diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other countries with strong ties to both India and Pakistan.

Foreign ministers from the Group of 7 industrialized nations had also urged “maximum restraint from both India and Pakistan” in a joint statement on Friday, warning that “further military escalation poses a serious threat to regional stability.”

After the heavy military exchanges on Saturday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, telling both that they needed to find ways to de-escalate and communicate directly to “avoid miscalculation.”

According to readouts of the calls from the State Department. Marco Rubio, United States Secretary of State, also offered U.S. help in starting talks between the two countries.

Students participating in a drill to prepare for an attack in Guwahati, India, on Saturday.

Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, described his call with Rubio as “very reassuring.” Dar said he told Rubio that Pakistan would not escalate, but that it depended on India.

“The response we wanted to give, we’ve given it. Now the ball is in India’s court. If they stop at this point, we will also consider stopping,” Dar said on Geo News, a Pakistani television channel. “But if they strike again, we will also respond.”

Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s external affairs minister, said on social media that he had spoken with Rubio on Saturday morning. “India’s approach has always been measured and responsible and remains so,” he said in the post.

Shopkeepers in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Saturday were watching a news broadcast about the military confrontation between Pakistan and India.

With both sides blaming each other for escalation, there is no off-ramp in sight, and fears are growing among the people of India and Pakistan about what might happen next.

 

 

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