Pakistan said it had begun retaliation strikes after accusing India of targeting three of its military bases with missiles fired from fighter jets, in a major escalation of the brewing conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
“India, with its naked aggression, has attacked with missiles. Nur Khan base, Murid base and Shorkot base have been targeted,” Pakistan military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a live broadcast aired by state television early on Saturday.
Shortly afterwards, Pakistan officials confirmed they had begun their counter attack against India, under the name Operation Bunyan Ul Marsoos, an Arabic phrase meaning ‘wall of lead’. Pakistan said the Pathankot military air field in Punjab and Udhampur air force base in Indian-administered Kashmir were among the targets, with loud explosions heard from both. Loud explosions were also heard in the Indian-Kashmir city of Srinagar.
A statement from India’s ministry of defence said: “The Indian Armed Forces are maintaining a high state of alert, and all such aerial threats are being tracked and engaged using counter-drone systems.”
Chaudhry said India had fired six ballistic missiles from over the border in Punjab. He said most were intercepted by Pakistani air defences.
Nur Khan air base in Rawalpindi, where the military has its headquarters, is around 10km from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. In the aftermath of the strikes, Pakistan shut down its air space.
Video shared on social media showed flames and smoke billowing into the night sky as a voice can be heard saying, “There has been an attack on Nur Khan base as fighter jets flew past.”
The early morning strikes on Nur Khan in Rawalpindi, a densely populated area, caused mass panic, with residents running into the streets. “There was a loud explosion which woke everyone up. It was so scary, everyone is still in a panic,” said one resident living nearby.
India’s attempted strikes on Rawalpindi and other key military bases – and the launch of Pakistan’s counter-attack on Saturday – marks the steepest escalation in their confrontation yet, bringing the two countries the closest they have been to war in decades.
Related: ‘There will be war’: fear and defiance across border after Indian airstrikes in Pakistan
On Wednesday India’s missiles struck nine sites in Pakistan killing 31 people. Those strikes in turn were India’s response to an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir late last month, in which militants killed 25 Hindu tourists and a guide, which they alleged had Pakistan’s involvement.
India’s targeting of Pakistani army bases came hours after Indian said Pakistan had launched yet another wave of drone attacks across 26 locations over the state of Punjab and Indian-administered Kashmir on Friday night. Explosions were heard near the airport in Srinagar, the main city in India-administered Kashmir.
The Indian army said they had largely intercepted the drones but police said three people in the Ferozepur district of Punjab, which borders Pakistan, had been injured from the drone attacks, one in a critical condition.
Earlier in the day, India accused Pakistan of launching an attack using up to 400 drones to target cities, military bases and places of worship across the north of the country on Thursday.
India claimed to have intercepted hundreds of Pakistani drones, which it said came across the border into Indian-administered Kashmir, as well as Rajasthan, Punjab and Gujarat. It said a first wave of drones came on Thursday evening and another wave hit close to dawn on Friday.
India said it had launched four drone strikes at Pakistan, directly targeting military defence infrastructure.
In a press conference on Friday, the Indian military alleged that Pakistan’s drone attacks on Thursday had targeted a gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, injuring a civilian, and that the drones had also targeted Christian churches.
“The targeting of temples, gurdwaras, convents is a new low by Pakistan,” said India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri.
Pakistan’s information minister, Attaullah Tarar, denied the drone attacks and said Pakistan had not undertaken any “offensive actions” within Indian Kashmir or beyond Pakistan’s border.
However, a Pakistan security official said that Thursday night’s drone strikes were just to “heat things up” before Pakistan launched a fully fledged retaliatory attack. “When we hit back, everyone will know,” they said.
The Pakistani army gave new details of Wednesday’s strike in which it claimed Pakistan had deployed more than 100 planes to ward off the strikes by Indian planes that carried out the attacks from Indian airspace. It said the two sides had engaged in an hour-long aerial dogfight.
Pakistan claimed it used Chinese-made weapons and ground air defences to help bring down five Indian fighter jets. India has yet to respond to allegations that Pakistan shot down its planes, but debris from at least three fighter jets, including that of at least one elite French Rafale jet, was seen in Indian-administered Kashmir and Punjab.
“We will not de-escalate – with the damages India did on our side, they should take a hit,” Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said at a media briefing. “So far we have been protecting ourselves but they will get an answer in our own timing.”
