NEW DELHI — India and Pakistan were engaged Friday in their most intense military confrontation in decades, with reported attacks reaching well beyond the contested Kashmir region and raising fears of a broader regional conflict.
The hostilities, which began with Indian airstrikes on Wednesday targeting sites in Pakistan and Pakistani-administered Kashmir, have since escalated rapidly. By Friday, both countries were reporting widespread assaults, including drone attacks, missile strikes, and cross-border shelling.
The Indian Army said Pakistani forces had launched strikes along the entire western frontier, including in Rajasthan’s Jaisalmer and Punjab’s Amritsar — areas far from the traditional conflict zone. The military claimed in a post on X that drone attacks had been “effectively repulsed.” Pakistan, however, has rejected those assertions.
“This is a new kind of battle,” an Indian defense analyst noted, referring to the central role of drones in the current conflict — a shift from past confrontations that were largely fought with conventional ground and artillery forces.
Overnight into Friday, intense shelling and gunfire erupted along the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border dividing Kashmir. Residents in Indian-administered Jammu reported power blackouts and sightings of drones and missiles overhead as they sheltered in their homes. Similar reports emerged from towns in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, where homes were damaged in the fighting. Civilian casualties were reported on both sides, though numbers have not been independently verified.
The latest round of violence follows a deadly terrorist attack on April 22 that killed 26 civilians in the tourist hub of Pahalgam, located in India-administered Kashmir. India blamed Pakistan-based militants for the assault and vowed to respond militarily. Pakistan has denied involvement.
India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed, have fought three wars since their partition in 1947, with each conflict involving territorial disputes over Kashmir. The 1971 war led to the establishment of the Line of Control, though sovereignty over the region remains unresolved.
Disinformation and media censorship cloud the picture
The exact scope and impact of the current fighting remain difficult to verify, in part due to the tightly controlled media environments in both countries. Pakistan has long banned Indian media content, while India recently restricted access to Pakistani news sources.
X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, announced that it is complying with an Indian government order to block over 8,000 accounts — including those of foreign news outlets — from being accessible within India.
The information blackout has fueled confusion and competing narratives, with state broadcasters in both nations offering sharply divergent accounts of battlefield developments.
While international calls for de-escalation have increased, diplomatic efforts to contain the violence have so far been unsuccessful.
