Pakistan said it fired missiles at military installations in India, accusing India of targeting at least three of its air bases. India said it was responding to a surge of Pakistani attacks. The combat between India and Pakistan intensified significantly 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 vital air force installation near the capital, Islamabad. Witnesses in the city of Rawalpindi, where Nur Khan is located, reported hearing at least three deafening 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 characterized its action on Saturday as retaliation. The Indian military said it had targeted several Pakistani military targets, two of them radar facilities, in response to a series of Pakistani attacks on 26 locations using drones, long-range missiles, and fighter aircraft. 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. “It is Pakistani actions that have constituted provocation and escalation. In response, India has defended and reacted in a responsible and measured fashion,” India’s foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, said. Between the claims and counterclaims, it was increasingly apparent that the night involved some of the heaviest military engagement from both parties since the armed confrontation began on Wednesday.
Both countries claim that they want to de-escalate, but the confrontation has only intensified since India conducted airstrikes in Pakistan on Wednesday. India had accused Pakistan of harboring terrorist groups that carried out a fatal attack on vacationers last month in India-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan has denied involvement. Since then, the crisis has escalated into the most expansive confrontation between the two nations in half a century, with ferocious battling along portions of their frontier and drone attacks and other strikes striking deeper within each country. Each response has come with surges of claims, counterclaims, and disinformation. That 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 exhorted “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.” But that diplomatic pressure has yet to yield a breakthrough. After the heavy military exchanges on Saturday morning, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, telling both sides 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. Mr. Rubio also offered U.S. assistance in initiating discussions between the two countries.
Ishaq Dar, Pakistan’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, described his call with Mr. Rubio as “very reassuring.” Mr. Dar said he told Mr. Rubio that Pakistan would not escalate, but that it depended on India. “The response we wanted to give, we’ve given it. Now the game is in India’s court. If they halt at this juncture, we will also contemplate stopping,” Mr. Dar said on Geo News, a Pakistani television channel. “But if they strike again, we will also respond.”
Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, said on social media that he had spoken with Mr. Rubio on Saturday morning. “India’s approach has always been measured and responsible and remains so,” he said in the post. With both parties blaming each other for escalating the conflict, there is no off-ramp in sight, and concerns are growing among the people of India and Pakistan about what might happen next.
India and Pakistan became separate countries in 1947, and they have fought three conflicts, with disputes over Kashmir a part of each one. One of those conflicts, in December 1971, established the so-called Line of Control that divides Kashmir.
