India bombs suspected terrorist bases in Pakistan, raising tensions in Kashmir

India's attacks on Pakistan came after the April 22, 2025, attack, when a group of gunmen, allegedly affiliated with the Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, opened fire on tourists near Pahalgam, a town in Indian-controlled southern Kashmir. According to the Indian government, the recent attack was precise and targeted suspected terrorist bases where the attack had been planned, further escalating the conflict between the two nuclear powers.

The Indian Army bombed nine suspected terrorist bases in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir shortly after midnight on Wednesday (07.05.2025), where terrorist attacks against the country on April 22, 2025, were allegedly planned.

"The Indian Armed Forces recently launched Operation Sindoor, targeting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed," the Indian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.

In a post on social media site X, the Indian Army posted an image with the name of the operation, accompanied by the text "Justice has been done."

Although India has attacked Pakistan-administered Kashmir and surrounding areas in recent years during periods of rising tension, Wednesday's attack in Punjab, a Pakistani territory not in the disputed region, marks an escalation in the conflict between the two nuclear-armed countries.

India claimed to have attacked Pakistan after gathering evidence pointing to "the clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists" in last month's attack on civilians in a tourist area of ​​Kashmir. The Indian government claimed that its military actions on Wednesday were "measured, responsible, and designed not to provoke escalation." It added that it had only targeted "known terrorist camps."

"No Pakistani military installation has been attacked. India has shown considerable restraint in the selection of targets and the method of execution," the Indian ministry's statement added

The Pakistani government called the Indian attacks a "blatant and unprovoked act of war" that had "violated Pakistan's sovereignty." Pakistani authorities also claimed that civilians had been killed in the Indian attacks, a claim that could not be independently verified.

Pakistan asserted that the attacks "will not go unanswered" and that it will respond "at a time and place of its choosing." Pakistani military officials said they had launched a "measured but decisive" response.

At the White House, US President Donald Trump called the escalation between India and Pakistan "a shame." "We just found out," he said of the Indian attacks. "They've been fighting for a long time. I just hope it ends soon." Shortly after the attacks, Indian national security adviser Ajit Doval briefed Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the military's actions, Indian officials said.

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for restraint on both sides, stating: "The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan." But the magnitude and nature of India's attacks are likely to trigger a "significant retaliation" from Pakistan, said Asfandyar Mir, a senior fellow in the South Asia program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

Following the terrorist attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir in 2016 and 2019, the Indian government carried out more limited attacks in Pakistani-controlled territory. But this time, India "has crossed two significant thresholds in its military action" by attacking a large number of sites in Pakistan and the heartland of Punjab, Mir said.

As India braced for possible retaliation from Pakistan, military officials said all of the country's air defense units had been activated along the border, Indian state broadcaster reported. Airlines reported that several airports, including the one in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, were closed to civilian traffic.

The exact nature of the attacks, whether they were missiles fired from India or Indian fighter jets that penetrated Pakistan, is unknown. The Pakistani military claimed that the Indian aircraft did not enter its airspace when carrying out the attacks.

Residents of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, reported hearing aircraft flying overhead. They said a site in a rural area near Muzaffarabad, formerly used by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group, appeared to have been the target of the attacks.

A Pakistani military spokesman said four other locations were also attacked. One was Bahawalpur in Pakistan's Punjab province, home to a religious seminary associated with Jaish-e-Mohammad, another Pakistan-based militant group; the others were Kotli and Bagh in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Muridke in Punjab.

Indian forces named their military operation Sindoor, a reference to the vermillion-red color that Hindu women wear in their hair after marriage. It refers to the horrific nature of the terrorist attack two weeks ago, in which many wives watched their husbands being killed in front of them.

"Victory to Mother India," wrote X Rajnath Singh, India's defense minister, on social media.

In the April 22, 2025, attack, militants from the Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba opened fire on tourists in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir, killing 26 people and wounding more than a dozen others.

The massacre was one of the worst attacks against Indian civilians in decades, and India was quick to suggest that Pakistan, its neighbor and arch-enemy, had been involved. The two countries have fought several wars over Kashmir, a region they share but each claims in its entirety.

The Pakistani government has denied involvement in the attack, and India has provided little evidence to support its claims. However, shortly after the attack, India announced a series of punitive measures against Pakistan, including the threat of disrupting the flow of a major river system that supplies it with water.

In Kashmir, Indian forces launched a sweeping crackdown, detaining hundreds of people while continuing the search for the attackers. India and Pakistan repeatedly exchanged small-arms fire along the border in the days following the attack.

But India's attacks on Wednesday represent an escalation of the conflict. The Pakistani government has vowed to respond in kind to any Indian aggression, and both countries have the capacity to inflict severe damage.

India has long accused Pakistan of fomenting separatist violence in Kashmir, a picturesque and ethnically diverse valley nestled in the Himalayan mountains. Kashmir's fate was thrown into doubt in 1947 when the British divided their former colony, India, into two countries: Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India.

Shortly after, the Hindu monarch of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh (1895-1961), who initially decided to maintain the independence of the Muslim-majority region, yielded to India when Pakistan sent a military force to occupy part of its territory. Today, both countries administer part of Kashmir and simultaneously claim all of it, while Kashmiris have little say in the matter.

Since the 1999 war between the two nations over the region, and due to the rise of the separatist insurgency, Kashmir remains one of the most militarized areas in the world. The two countries have repeatedly come close to war since then, including in 2019 when a bomb attack killed at least 40 Indian soldiers in Kashmir. That attack, claimed by the Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, triggered an Indian airstrike in Pakistan, and an Indian plane was shot down. Tensions between the two countries eased when Pakistan released the pilot.