The fighting between India and Pakistan has intensified into the most expansive conflict between the nuclear-armed countries in decades.
There were widespread accounts of fighting well beyond the disputed Kashmir region, including extensive use of drones, along with gunfire and artillery strikes.
The conflict began after militants killed 26 people in a tourist area on the Indian side of Kashmir last month. India accused Pakistan of being involved in the attack; Pakistan denied that claim.
Here is what to know about the fighting, longstanding tensions between India and Pakistan, the attack in Kashmir and attempts to resolve the conflict.
What’s the latest in the fighting?
A swirl of disinformation and contradictory government statements has made it difficult to know the precise nature and location of attacks. Both sides are spreading their own spin and blocking access to media outlets.
In the India-administered part of Kashmir, the city of Jammu and others were blacked out completely, with residents reporting drones and missiles flying overhead as they sheltered in their homes. Blasts also hit towns in the Pakistan-administered side of Kashmir, damaging some houses.
The Indian military said on Friday that Pakistan had launched attacks using drones and other weapons along its western border and that it had thwarted those attacks. Pakistan rejected those claims.
India said it responded by striking Pakistan’s air defense systems and radars. Pakistan said that its forces had shot down more than two dozen Indian drones that had entered Pakistan’s airspace.
The claims from both sides could not be independently verified.
One of the worst-hit places in the escalating conflict is Poonch, in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. Thirteen people were killed and dozens more injured there in the first night of cross-border shelling on Wednesday, officials said.
Earlier in the week, the Indian government said that its forces had struck sites in Pakistani territory on Wednesday. Pakistani military officials said that they had downed Indian planes.
More than 20 people were killed after six sites were hit on the Pakistan-controlled side of Kashmir and in the Punjab province of Pakistan, the country’s military officials said. At least 10 people have been killed in shelling from the Pakistani side since India carried out its strikes, residents of the India-controlled part of Kashmir said.
What happened in the Kashmir attack?
On April 22, militants shot and killed 26 people in the Baisaran Valley in Kashmir. Another 17 were injured.
Except for one local Kashmiri man, a government tally of the dead showed that all were Hindu tourists. Accounts from the injured and survivors suggested many were targeted after they were asked about their religion. The attack, which occurred near Pahalgam, a town in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir, was one of the worst on Indian civilians in decades.
A group calling itself the Resistance Front emerged on social media to take responsibility. Indian officials privately say the group is a proxy for Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organization based in Pakistan.
In Kashmir, Indian security forces have begun a sweeping clampdown, arresting thousands of people.
What is Operation Sindoor?
India has named its military action Operation Sindoor.
Sindoor, or vermilion powder, is a traditional marker of the marital status of Hindu women. Married women wear it either in the parting of their hair or on their foreheads, and they wipe it off if they become widowed. During the April 22 terrorist attack, many women lost their husbands, who were targeted because they were Hindu.
The Indian government’s choice of the name Operation Sindoor signaled its intention to avenge the widowed women.
“Operation Sindoor” also signals to right-wing Hindu groups — many of which favor more traditionally defined gender roles — that the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is listening to their demands for vengeance.
But some feminists have criticized the use of the word sindoor.
Hindu nationalism is predominantly driven by a male view of the world, said V. Geetha, a feminist historian who writes about gender, caste and class. “Women figure in it as objects to be protected or as mother figures goading their men to prove their heroism,” Ms. Geetha said.
What is being done to stop the fighting?
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.
There was a flurry of diplomatic meetings in New Delhi and Islamabad on Thursday. Top diplomats from Iran and Saudi Arabia, crucial regional players who have close ties to both of the warring countries, were in New Delhi for meetings.
The diplomatic push was centered around the hope that the heaviest military engagement could be contained to the actions on early Wednesday. Both sides could plausibly claim victory, as India struck deeper into Pakistan than it had at any point in recent decades, and Pakistan downed several Indian planes.
Diplomats and analysts expressed some hope that the day’s events might offer the two sides an offramp. The question now is whether Pakistan will decide that it must answer India’s strikes in Punjab, the Pakistani heartland, with an attack of its own on Indian soil.
What are the origins of the dispute over Kashmir?
The roots of the Kashmir conflict trace back to the 1947 partition of British India, which led to the creation of a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan.
In October of that year, the Hindu monarch of the Muslim-majority princely state of Kashmir acceded to India, but Pakistan laid claim to the territory and sought to take it by military force. A U.N.-brokered agreement in 1949 established a cease-fire line, dividing Kashmir.
After wars in 1965 and 1971, the cease-fire line became the Line of Control, with India possessing about two-thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan the rest. But the dispute remains unresolved.
Here is a timeline of the decades of tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
Has Pakistan supported militancy in Kashmir?
An insurgency in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir began in the 1980s, primarily driven by local grievances, with Pakistan eventually supporting some groups, experts say.
Among the Kashmir-focused insurgent groups that emerged, some supported independence for the region, while others wanted the Indian side of Kashmir to be taken over by Pakistan.
In the 1990s, Pakistan provided training and other support to several militant groups operating in Kashmir and within Pakistan. This involvement was later acknowledged by several senior Pakistani officials, including the former military ruler Pervez Musharraf. The spike in insurgency in the 1990s forced an exodus of Kashmir’s minority Hindus, a large number of them leaving for New Delhi and other cities after facing targeted attacks.
The insurgency began to ease around 2002, as Pakistan banned Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, another major militant group, although Lashkar-e-Taiba continued to operate under aliases. A cease-fire was declared and a peace process with India was initiated, a shift that some observers linked to pressure by the United States after its post-9/11 intervention in Afghanistan.
The peace process collapsed after attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008, which killed 166 people and were attributed to Lashkar-e-Taiba.
What is Kashmir’s status now?
Since war last broke out in 1999, Kashmir has remained one of the most militarized places in the world. India and Pakistan have come to the brink of war several times, including in 2019, when a suicide bombing in Kashmir killed at least 40 Indian soldiers.
In 2019, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi revoked a part of the Indian constitution that had given semi-autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. The move, to fully integrate Jammu and Kashmir, as India’s portion of the region is known, was part of his Hindu nationalist agenda.
Pakistan condemned India’s moves. But violent unrest has broken out in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan, too. Protests there have reflected a general feeling of dissatisfaction with Pakistani rule.
Direct rule by India dampened the outbreaks of violence in the portion of Kashmir it controlled. Voting also resumed last year. But discontent with Mr. Modi’s party, particularly for how heavily it polices the lives of Kashmiris, remains.
John Yoon contributed reporting.
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
Anupreeta Das covers India and South Asia for The Times. She is based in New Delhi.
Pragati K.B. is a reporter for The Times based in New Delhi, covering news from across India.
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