Muzaffarabad: India fired missiles at Pakistani territory early Wednesday in a major escalation of tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals, with Islamabad vowing retaliation.
Pakistan military says death toll from India strikes rises to 26 civilians, including children, while the Indian side claimed eight killed, 29 injured in shelling in its border town.
China called on both India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and put peace and stability first, its foreign ministry said in response to the military escalation between the South Asian countries.
Analyzing witness photos from one of the wreckage sites, in the village of Wuyan in India-administered Kashmir, one weapons researcher identified the debris as an external fuel tank for a plane.
The analyst, Trevor Ball, of the Armament Research Services, said the tank was likely from a Rafale or Mirage fighter jet, both made by the French manufacturer Dassault Aviation and flown by the Indian forces. Ball could not confirm whether the tank had come from an aircraft that had been hit by enemy fire.
The Chinese ministry said that it regrets India's military action and is concerned about the current situation.
The Indian government said it had attacked nine sites, describing them as "precision strikes at terrorist camps" in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, days after it blamed Islamabad for a deadly attack on the Indian-administered side of the disputed region.
"We will retaliate at the time of our choosing, " said Pakistani military spokesman Lieutenant-General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, calling the strikes a "heinous provocation".
India had been widely expected to respond militarily to the April 22 attack on tourists in Kashmir last month by gunmen.
Pakistan rejected the accusations, and the two sides have exchanged nightly gunfire since April 24 along the de facto border in Kashmir, the militarised Line of Control, according to the Indian army.
For days, the international community has piled pressure on Pakistan and India to step back from the brink of war.
Asked about the strikes, US President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington he hopes the fighting "ends very quickly".
U.S. President Donald Trump termed rising tension between India and Pakistan a shame, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to officials in the nuclear-armed rivals after India attacked several sites in Pakistan.
Pakistan said it was mounting a response to India's military actions late on Tuesday.
"It's a shame, we just heard about it," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I guess people knew something was going to happen based on a little bit of the past. They've been fighting for a long time." He added, "I just hope it ends very quickly." U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X he was monitoring the situation closely, while adding that Washington would continue to engage the Asian neighbors to reach a "peaceful resolution." The State Department said Rubio spoke to the national security advisers of both nations, urging "both to keep lines of communication open and avoid escalation."
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