Since the incident, soldiers from both nations have been exchanging gunfire along the unofficial border, each side alleging that the other initiated the conflict.
Both countries expelled diplomats and citizens, ordered the border shut and closed their airspace for each other.
Here’s a look at multiple conflicts between the two countries since their bloody partition in 1947.
1947 â Just a few months after British India was divided into India, with a majority Hindu population, and Pakistan, with a majority Muslim population, the two newly formed countries engaged in their first war over control of Kashmir, a region with a Muslim majority but governed by a Hindu ruler. The conflict resulted in thousands of deaths before concluding in 1948.
1949 â A ceasefire mediated by the UN established a dividing line in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, with an intended vote under UN supervision to determine the region’s allegiance to either country. This vote has yet to take place.
1965 â The rivals fight their second war over Kashmir. Thousands are killed in inconclusive fighting before a ceasefire is brokered by the Soviet Union and the United States. Negotiations in Tashkent run until January 1966, ending in both sides giving back territories they seized during the war and withdrawing their armies.
1971 â India intervenes in a war over the independence of East Pakistan, which ends with the territory breaking away as the new country of Bangladesh. An estimated three million people are killed in the conflict.
1972 â India and Pakistan sign a peace accord, renaming the ceasefire line in Kashmir as the Line of Contro. Both sides deploy more troops along the frontier, turning it into a heavily fortified stretch of military outposts.
1989 â Kashmiri dissidents, with support from Pakistan, launch a bloody rebellion against Indian rule. Indian troops respond with brutal measures, intensifying diplomatic and military skirmishes between New Delhi and Islamabad.
1999 â Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri fighters seize several Himalayan peaks on the Indian side. India responds with aerial bombardments and artillery. At least 1,000 combatants are killed over 10 weeks, and a worried world fears the fighting could escalate to nuclear conflict. The US eventually steps in to mediate, ending the fighting.
2016 â Militants sneak into an army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing at least 18 soldiers. India responds by sending special forces inside Pakistani-held territory, later claiming to have killed multiple suspected rebels in “surgical strikes.” Pakistan denies that the strikes took place, but it leads to days of major border skirmishes. Combatants and civilians on both sides are killed.
2019 â The two sides again come close to war after a Kashmiri insurgent rams an explosive-laden car into a bus carrying Indian soldiers, killing 40. India carries out airstrikes in Pakistani territory and claims to have struck a militant training facility. Pakistan later shoots down an Indian warplane and captures a pilot. He is later released, de-escalating tensions.
2025 â Militants attack Indian tourists in the region’s resort town of Pahalgam and kill 26 men, most of them Hindus. India blames Pakistan, which denies it. India vows revenge on the attackers as tensions rise to their highest point since 2019. Both countries cancel visas for each other’s citizens, recall diplomats, shut their only land border crossing and close their airspaces to each other. New Delhi also suspends a crucial water-sharing treaty.
