India and Pakistan appeared to be dangerously escalating their armed confrontation on Thursday, as both countries said that their military sites had come under attack, and heavy shelling and strikes were reported overnight on each side of their border.
The military face-off began on Wednesday, when India struck several sites in Pakistani territory — its deepest strikes inside Pakistan in decades — in retaliation for a deadly terrorist attack two weeks before.
In a sign of the international alarm that the conflict could spin out of control, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with leaders from both countries on Thursday and emphasized the need for “immediate de-escalation,” according to State Department accounts of the calls.
India and Pakistan both continued to claim that they were not seeking an escalation in their military clash. But the reality on the ground indicated that they were not yet ready to take the offramps from their boiling tensions that had appeared to be taking shape a day before.
The Indian government said on Thursday that it had thwarted Pakistani attempts to unleash drones and missiles at Indian military targets in more than a dozen cities and towns, many of them home to air force bases.
India said it had responded by striking Pakistan’s air defense systems and radars close to the city of Lahore — the kind of blow that often causes a military conflict to intensify, analysts said.
Pakistan accused India of continuing what it called illegal aggression and said its forces had shot down more than two dozen Indian drones that entered Pakistan’s airspace.
In the rapidly developing situation, the claims from both sides could not be independently verified.
The two countries, separated from each other at the end of British colonial rule in 1947, have fought several wars, with the main flashpoint being their competing claims over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is divided between them.
The latest escalation came after a gruesome terrorist attack on the Indian side of Kashmir last month that killed 26 civilians. India accused Pakistan of being behind the attack and vowed military action. Pakistan denied the accusations and warned that it would respond in kind if it was attacked.
After a day of violence on Wednesday that opened with Indian airstrikes and Pakistani claims to have shot down aircraft — and reports of dozens of deaths in total — both India and Pakistan seemed to be open to finding a way to de-escalate.
Even as leaders on both sides publicly struck victorious tones, Pakistani officials said that security officials from both countries had made initial contact to reopen communication.
President Trump expressed his willingness to help, too, as U.S. officials said they were engaging with the leaderships of both India and Pakistan to seek a resolution.
There were some hopeful signs of engagement on Thursday, including a flurry of diplomatic meetings in New Delhi and Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Top diplomats from Iran and Saudi Arabia, crucial regional players that have close ties to both of the warring countries, were in New Delhi for meetings.
But away from the halls of power, the news was of more violence as both sides appeared to be bracing for escalation.
The Indian side said that it had received heavy shelling from Pakistani positions along the border areas overnight, and it reported concerted attempts by Pakistani forces to target military towns with missiles and drones.
Indian officials said they had responded forcefully, and claimed that they had targeted Pakistan’s air defense radars and systems at several locations.
The Indian defense ministry said that the “Indian response has been in the same domain with same intensity as Pakistan,” suggesting that the volleys from the Pakistani side had been aimed at Indian defense installations.
“Our intention has not been to escalate matters,” said Vikram Misri, India’s foreign secretary. “We are only responding to the original escalations. And our response has been targeted, precise, controlled and measured.”
Pakistan, for its part, added to its claims that it had downed Indian aircraft, saying on Thursday that it had shot down drones that had penetrated Pakistani territory to carry out “another act of aggression.”
One of the Indian drones had managed to strike a military target near Lahore, said Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, adding that four members of its forces had been wounded and equipped had been damaged.
In a sign of the escalating violence, the United States issued an alert to American citizens in Lahore, the regional capital of Pakistan’s Punjab Province, near the border with India.
“Due to reports of drone explosions, downed drones and possible airspace incursions in and near Lahore, the U.S. Consulate General in Lahore has directed all consulate personnel to shelter in place,” the statement said.
As they tried to piece together the events of a murky second night of violence, analysts said that Pakistan had most likely tried to mount an attack that was intended to answer India’s strikes on Wednesday.
While India had claimed to have limited its targets to terrorist sites on Wednesday, Pakistan has no similar option for striking India, making its task trickier in selecting targets.
Pakistan appeared to try to dial up the volume of shelling that had already been happening around the line dividing Kashmir between the two countries, to include targeting of towns farther away.
India’s decision to hit Pakistan’s air defense systems suggested that India’s own defense systems may have suffered damage, or that it was trying to establish dominance as it escalated the conflict, analysts said.
“Targeting air defense systems involves particular risks, because you make your adversary feel like they could be blinded, or their command-and-control systems could be left defenseless or degraded,” said Joshua White, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who formerly directed South Asia policy in the White House’s National Security Council.
“That induces leaders to act even more quickly as crises escalate,” he added, “changing the tempo and character of a conflict.”
Another possibility behind the second night’s escalation, according to Western diplomats and analysts, was that India did not consider its initial strikes decisive enough to establish deterrence as it demands that Pakistan do more to stop terrorism. India may have attempted a more forceful response either provoked by Pakistani attempts at retaliation or independent of them.
While there was evidence that India had managed to hit facilities related to two prominent terrorist outfits, there was increasing evidence that India had suffered blows in the process.
At least two Indian aircraft went down in the confrontation, according to Indian officials. At least one of the planes was a French-made Rafale, according to two people in the French defense ministry with knowledge of the situation. The ministry, as well as the company that makes the planes, declined to comment.
The diplomatic push in the day after the initial confrontation was being built around the hope that the heaviest military engagement could be contained to the actions on early Wednesday.
Pakistani officials said the national security advisers of both countries had established “some interaction” after Wednesday’s initial strikes. The engagement was first mentioned by Pakistan’s foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, in an interview with the news channel TRT. A second official confirmed the contact, but said it was indirect — suggesting there were mediators in the mix.
Still, in both capitals, it was clear that the risk of escalation was far from over.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government briefed representatives of the opposition parties on India’s military action, and all of the political figures came out with a statement of support for the government’s action.
“This is an ongoing operation,” India’s parliamentary affairs minister, Kiren Rijiju, said after the meeting.
At the beginning of his meeting with his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar of India said that the government’s actions against Pakistan had been “targeted and measured.”
“It is not our intention to escalate the situation,” he said. “However, if there are military attacks on us, there should be no doubt that it will be met with a very, very firm response.”
In Pakistan, the country’s leadership also showed a united front. Dominating newspapers and social media were images of a funeral held on Wednesday for a 7-year old boy who was killed in the Indian strikes. Pakistan’s top leadership, including the country’s prime minister, president and its army chief, were all in attendance.
After the funeral, Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, condemned India’s actions as “cowardice” and vowed they would be “met with decisive action.”
Catherine Porter, Aurelien Breeden, Anupreeta Das, Hari Kumar, Showkat Nanda, Zia ur-Rehman and Edward Wong contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/world/asia/india-pakistan-diplomacy-kashmir.html
