India in air attack on Pakistan

India said its warplanes struck a militant training camp inside Pakistan on Tuesday, killing a very large number of fighters, raising risk of conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours, although Pakistan officials denied there had been any casualties.

The airstrike near the town of Balakot, about 50km from the frontier, was the deepest cross-border raid launched by India since the last of its three wars with Pakistan in 1971.

Pakistan condemned the Indian action and said it would respond at a time and place of its choice.

The airstrikes, according to the Indian government, hit a training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the group that claimed credit for a suicide car bomb attack that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary police in Kashmir on February 14.

The action was ordered as India said it had intelligence that Jaish was planning more attacks.

“In the face of imminent danger, a preemptive strike became absolutely necessary,” foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale said.

“The existence of such training facilities, capable of training hundreds of jihadis could not have functioned without the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities.”

Pakistan denies harbouring JeM, a primarily anti-India group that forged ties with alQaeda and has been on a UN terror list since 2001. In December 2001, Jaish fighters, along with members of another Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, launched an attack on India’s parliament, which almost led to a fourth war.

China, Pakistan’s long-time ally, urged both countries to exercise restraint as tensions rose to the highest in years.

“We hope that India and Pakistan can exercise restraint, and take steps that are conducive to stabilising the regional situation and improving bilateral ties, rather than the opposite,” foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said.

Gokhale said a very large number of militants were killed in the strikes by Frenchmade Mirage 2000 jets on a Jaish training camp near Balakot, a town in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The commander of the camp was Maulana Yusuf Azhar, a brother-in-law of JeM leader Masood Azhar, Gokhale said.

A senior Indian government source said that 300 militants had been killed in the strikes and that the warplanes had ventured as far as 80km inside Pakistan.

But no evidence was immediately provided to back up the claims of militant casualties.

“I want to assure you our country is in safe hands,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi told a cheering political rally in western India hours after the raid.

“I won’t let the country down,” Modi, who faces a tight election in coming months, said. There has been mounting impatience in India to avenge the February 14 attack, which was the most deadly seen in Kashmir during an insurgency that has last three decades, and as news of the raid broke, celebrations erupted across the country.

Pakistan’s top civilian and military leaders rejected India’s comments that it had struck terror camps inside Pakistan, vowing to prove wrong India’s claims and warning that it would retaliate against Indian aggression.

Pakistan’s National Security Committee (NSC), comprising top officials including Prime Minister Imran Khan and army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa, said that it strongly rejected Indian claim of targeting an alleged terrorist camp near Balakot and the claim of heavy casualties. The statement said Khan would engage with global leadership to expose irresponsible Indian policy.

It also warned that Pakistan would respond at the time and place of its choosing to Indian aggression.

Earlier, the Pakistan military said its own warplanes had chased off the Indian aircraft before they could inflict any real harm.

A spokesperson said the Indian warplanes dropped their “payload” in a forested area, causing no casualties and no serious material damage.