India says strikes on Pakistan were ‘right to respond’ as Pakistan warns to ‘avenge’
by AFP Staff Writers
New Delhi (AFP) May 7, 2025
India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said Wednesday that missile strikes against Pakistan were a “carefully planned” operation that exercised New Delhi’s “right to respond”.
India’s military said the strikes destroyed “nine terrorist camps” belonging to those it blames for an attack last month in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people.
Pakistan said 21 civilians were killed in the strikes, with five more deaths reported in cross-border gunfire that followed.
Among the dead were four children, including two three-year-old girls, according to officials in Islamabad.
“The targets we had chosen were destroyed with great precision and sensitivity, ensuring that no civilian population or area was affected,” Singh told reporters in New Delhi.
“We only targeted terror camps, exercising our right to respond to the attack on our soil.”
India had been widely expected to respond to the April 22 assault on tourists in Kashmir, which it blamed on Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.
Singh said the operation was aimed solely at “terror infrastructure”, describing it as a calibrated response that reflected India’s restraint and professionalism.
“We can say that it was a display of precision, alertness and humanity”, he said.
Islamabad rejects backing the April 22 attack.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif earlier accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of launching the strikes to “shore up” his domestic popularity, but said that Islamabad had struck back.
“The retaliation has already started,” Asif told AFP. “We won’t take long to settle the score.”
Pakistan warns will ‘avenge’ deaths from Indian strikes
Muzaffarabad, Pakistan (AFP) May 7, 2025 –
Pakistan has warned it will “avenge” those killed by Indian air strikes that New Delhi said were in response to an attack in Kashmir, signalling an imminent escalation in the worst violence in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
At least 43 deaths have been reported so far, with Islamabad saying 31 civilians were killed by the Indian strikes and firing along the border, and New Delhi adding at least 12 dead from Pakistani shelling.
“We make this pledge, that we will avenge each drop of the blood of these martyrs,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in an address to the nation late Wednesday.
India’s army said it destroyed nine “terrorist camps” in Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday, two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing an attack on tourists in the Indian-administered side of disputed Kashmir — a charge Pakistan denies.
Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said five Indian jets had been downed across the border.
An Indian senior security source, who asked not to be named, said three of its fighter jets had crashed on home territory.
The two sides have exchanged heavy artillery fire along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, which both countries claim in full but administer separately.
The South Asian neighbours have fought two full-scale wars over the divided territory since they were carved out of the sub-continent after gaining independence from British rule in 1947.
“There were terrible sounds during the night, there was panic among everyone,” said Muhammad Salman, who lives close to a mosque in Pakistan-administered Kashmir that was hit by an Indian strike.
“We are moving to a safer place… we are homeless now,” added 24-year-old Tariq Mir, who was hit in the leg by shrapnel.
India said that its actions “have been focused, measured and non-escalatory”.
Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of launching the strikes to “shore up” his domestic popularity, adding that Islamabad “won’t take long to settle the score”.
– ‘People are fleeing’ –
On Wednesday night, the Pakistani military spokesman said firing was “ongoing” at the Line of Control and that Islamabad would take retaliatory action against the air strikes.
Chaudhry reiterated Pakistan’s “right to respond, in self-defence, at time, place, and manner of its
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