UN chief urges India to exercise restraint amid escalating military tensions with Pakistan

While urging both nuclear-armed Asian neighbors to exercise the utmost military caution, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his deep worry on Tuesday about Indian assaults in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Prior to India’s military actions earlier this week, Guterres stated that tensions between India and Pakistan were “at their highest in years” following an Islamist militant attack in India-administered Kashmir on April 22 that claimed 26 lives and was denounced as a “awful terror attack” by the U.N. chief. According to his spokeswoman, Guterres promised to assist de-escalation efforts in separate meetings with India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif late last month.

In the most intense conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors in over 20 years, India launched missiles toward Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir on Wednesday. Pakistan claimed to have shot down five Indian planes and promised to respond.

India claimed to have hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” facilities, some of which were connected to the 26-person Islamist militant attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month. Pakistan said that India “had ignited an inferno in the region” and that at least 26 people had been murdered on Wednesday. Islamabad said it will react “at a time, place and manner of its choosing to avenge the loss of innocent Pakistani lives and blatant violation of its sovereignty” .

Islamabad vehemently denied Indian claims that terrorist camps were located on its soil, according to a government security committee.

Fears of fresh violence in one of the most hazardous flashpoints in the world were sparked by the Indian strikes, which targeted Punjab, Pakistan’s most populated province, for the first time since the last full-scale conflict between the old adversaries more than 50 years ago. “The targets we had set were destroyed with exactness according to a well-planned strategy,” Rajnath Singh, the national defense minister of India, stated. “We have shown sensitivity by ensuring that no civilian population was affected in the slightest.”

None of the six targets in Pakistan were terrorist camps, according to Islamabad. A Pakistani military spokeswoman said that at least 26 civilians had been killed and 46 injured. Indian television networks broadcast footage of fires, explosions, massive smoke plumes in the night sky, and people escaping in various locations across Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir. The video could not be independently verified by Reuters.

At dawn, damage from an Indian attack could be seen in Pakistani Kashmir’s capital, Muzaffarabad. A modest mosque with a collapsed minaret in a residential neighborhood on a hillside was encircled by security personnel. Funerals were given to a few of the deceased later in the day. Hindu-dominated Since gaining independence in 1947, India and Islamic Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both countries fully claim and partially rule.

Five Indian fighter planes and drones were shot down, according to a statement from the prime minister’s office in Pakistan; however, India did not confirm this. Reports that Pakistan had shot down fighter planes were deemed “disinformation” by the Indian embassy in Beijing. Three fighter planes crashed in different parts of the Himalayan region during the night, and their pilots were taken to hospitals, local government sources in Indian Kashmir told Reuters. Officials from the Indian Defense Ministry were not immediately available to verify the allegation.