Pakistan accused of launching fresh wave of drone strikes on India | India

Pakistan has been accused of launching a recent wave of drone strikes in opposition to India, with projectiles reported over the states of Indian-administered Kashmir and Punjab.

Early on Saturday morning, a spokesperson for the Pakistan military mentioned India had fired ballistic missiles that fell in Indian territory, making the declare in an unscheduled tv broadcast at 1.50am native time.

“I want to give you the shocking news that India fired six ballistic missiles from Adampur. One of the ballistic missiles hit in Adampur, the rest of the five missiles hit in Indian Punjab area of Amritsar,” the spokesperson mentioned, providing no additional particulars.

Explosions have been reported in Amritsar in addition to the Pakistani cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

Witnesses in Indian Kashmir reported projectiles and flashes in Jammu earlier within the night time. Ten blasts have been heard close to the airport within the Srinagar, and explosions have been heard in different elements of the area. Witnesses mentioned the drone strikes have been heavier than those who passed off on Thursday night time.

Earlier within the day, India accused Pakistan of launching an assault utilizing as much as 400 drones to focus on cities, navy bases and locations of worship throughout the north of the nation on Thursday night time, because the Pakistani navy mentioned it might “not de-escalate with India”.

India claimed to have intercepted a whole bunch of Pakistani drones, which it mentioned got here throughout the border into Indian-administered Kashmir, in addition to Rajasthan, Punjab and Gujarat. It mentioned a primary wave of drones got here on Thursday night and one other wave hit near daybreak on Friday.

India mentioned it had launched 4 drone strikes at Pakistan, straight concentrating on navy defence infrastructure.

In a press convention on Friday, the Indian navy alleged that Pakistan’s drone assaults on Thursday had focused a gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, injuring a civilian, and that the drones had additionally focused Christian church buildings.

“The targeting of temples, gurdwaras, convents is a new low by Pakistan,” mentioned India’s overseas secretary, Vikram Misri.

Pakistan’s info minister, Attaullah Tarar, denied the drone assaults, calling the Indian military assertion “baseless and misleading”, and mentioned Pakistan had not undertaken any “offensive actions” inside Indian Kashmir or past Pakistan’s border.

Nonetheless, a Pakistan safety official mentioned that Thursday night time’s drone strikes have been simply to “heat things up” earlier than Pakistan launched a completely fledged retaliatory assault. “When we hit back, everyone will know,” they mentioned.

Misri known as Pakistan’s denial of the drone assaults “farcical” and “another example of its duplicity”.

The tit-for tat allegations have been yet one more alarming confrontation between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed nations, since India’s missile strikes on 9 websites in Pakistan on Wednesday killed 31 individuals. These strikes in flip have been India’s response to an assault in Indian-administered Kashmir late final month, during which militants killed 25 Hindu vacationers and a information.

Pakistan mentioned it thought-about the assault an “act of war” and vowed to retaliate.

“We will not de-escalate – with the damages India did on our side, they should take a hit,” Pakistan’s navy spokesperson, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, mentioned at a media briefing. “So far we have been protecting ourselves but they will get an answer in our own timing.”

The Pakistani military gave new particulars of Wednesday’s strike during which it claimed Pakistan had deployed greater than 100 planes to beat back the strikes by Indian planes that carried out the assaults from Indian airspace. It mentioned the 2 sides had engaged in an hour-long aerial dogfight.

Pakistan claimed it used Chinese language-made weapons and floor air defences to assist convey down 5 Indian fighter jets. India has but to reply to allegations that Pakistan shot down its planes, however particles from at the very least three fighter jets, together with that of at the very least one elite French Rafale jet, was seen in Indian-administered Kashmir and Punjab.

The worst-affected space from Thursday’s drone assaults was the town of Jammu, in India-administered Kashmir, which is near the road of management (LoC), the closely militarised border dividing the disputed area of Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

Regardless of many years of battle within the area, individuals within the metropolis mentioned they’d by no means witnessed such an aerial onslaught. They described a barrage of fiery projectiles streaking throughout the sky as air raid sirens wailed and the town was plunged into an enforced blackout in a single day.

Movies shared with the Guardian confirmed glowing orange dots piercing Jammu’s night time sky earlier than flashing and fading – in all probability drones intercepted by Indian air defence methods. Native officers confirmed particles from the projectiles had been recovered from a number of areas, together with densely populated neighbourhoods in and round Jammu, however no casualties have been reported.

Ajay Lakhotra, a 24-year-old scholar in Kanachak, a suburban space near the Pakistan border, mentioned: “Skirmishes and exchanges of gunfire are nothing new to us, but what happened on Thursday night was extraordinary. We saw fiery objects launching from the Pakistani side; the barrage was so intense it looked like fireworks lighting up the sky. Flames streaked everywhere. It was terrifying to witness.”

He mentioned it had quietened down after midnight however restarted at 4am. “Most of us couldn’t sleep all night.”

Deadly aggression continued alongside the LoC as troopers from each side continued to fireside throughout the border, killing and injuring civilians. With Pakistan’s threats to retaliate nonetheless looming, Indian-administered Kashmir and states throughout northern India remained on excessive alert.

The mounting aggressions and allegations have resulted in a rising info – and disinformation – battle on each side of the border.

India accused Pakistan of a flood of harmful disinformation and “grossly exaggerated claims” throughout its media, together with stories that dozens of Indian drones had been shot down over Pakistan, calling it a “gross misrepresentation of facts”.

“What should have been a moment of international reckoning against terror has instead been manipulated into a disinformation war, where truth is the first casualty,” India’s ministry of knowledge and broadcasting mentioned in a press release.

Nonetheless, mainstream Indian media has additionally been flooded with misinformation and pretend or unsubstantiated stories, together with false claims of an assault on Karachi port, stories of a navy coup and the arrest of Pakistan’s military chief. Photographs of Turkish navy personnel have been broadcast as “captured Pakistani pilots”. Photographs of highly effective bomb strikes on Gaza have been extensively shared as displaying India’s assault on Pakistan.

As a part of its alleged crackdown on misinformation, India ordered the social media platform X to dam greater than 8,000 accounts, together with these of Pakistani politicians, celebrities and media organisations, in addition to Indian impartial information organisations and Indian-Kashmiri journalists.

The transfer was confirmed by X in a press release, which mentioned in lots of circumstances the Indian authorities had not offered authorized justification for the blocks.

Nonetheless, X mentioned it had no alternative however to conform and take away the 8,000 accounts or it might face “penalties including significant fines and imprisonment of the company’s local employees”.