ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI – Pakistan announced that early on Saturday, it initiated a military assault against India, striking multiple sites including a missile storage facility in northern India, as the two sides deepened their most severe conflict in almost thirty years.
This Pakistani action followed its claim that India had earlier on Saturday launched missiles at three of Pakistan’s air bases, one of which is near Islamabad, although Pakistan asserted that the majority of these missiles were intercepted by its air defenses.
With a protracted conflict over Kashmir, both countries have been involved in daily skirmishes since Wednesday, following India’s strikes on what it described as terrorist bases inside Pakistan. Pakistan has pledged to respond in kind.
“BrahMos storage site has been taken out in general area Beas,” Pakistan’s military said in a message to journalists, adding that the Pathankot Airfield in India’s western Punjab state and Udhampur Air Force Station in Indian Kashmir were also hit.
India’s defense and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. India’s military was expected to brief the media shortly, the ministry of defense said.
Pakistan’s information minister said in a post on social media site X that the military operation was named “Operation Bunyanun Marsoos”. The term is taken from the Koran that means a firm, united structure.
Sounds of explosions were reported in India’s Srinagar and Jammu, where sirens were sounded, a Reuters witness said.
“India through its planes, launched air to surface missiles … Nur Khan base, Mureed base and Shorkot base were made targets,” Pakistan military spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a late-night televised statement.
One of the air bases is in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital Islamabad, and the other two are in Pakistan’s eastern province of Punjab, which borders India.
The Pakistani military spokesman said only a few missiles made it past air defenses, and those did not hit any “air assets”, according to initial damage assessments.
India has said its strikes on Wednesday, which kicked off the clashes between the countries, were in retaliation for a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month.
Pakistan denied India’s accusations that it was involved in the tourist attack. Since Wednesday, the two countries have exchanged cross-border fire and shelling, and sent drones and missiles into each other’s airspace.
Much of the fighting on Friday was in Indian Kashmir and neighboring Indian states. India said it shot down Pakistani drones.
Sounds of explosions were also heard in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore and the northwestern city of Peshawar, as the fighting threatened to spread.
At least 48 people have been killed since Wednesday, according to casualty estimates on both sides of the border that have not been independently verified.
