NEW DELHI: Indian forces are fully prepared to respond to any retaliation from Pakistan, an army spokeswoman said on Wednesday, after Delhi launched missile strikes on Pakistani sites that it said were linked to last month’s deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Indian Armed Forces launched “Operation Sindoor” in the early hours of Wednesday, hitting nine locations in Pakistan’s densely populated Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, from where it said “terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed.”
The strikes came amid heightened tensions between the rivaling neighbors in the aftermath of an attack on tourists near the resort town of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, in which 26 people — 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen — were killed.
“India has demonstrated considerable restraint in its response. However, it must be said that the Indian armed forces are fully prepared to respond to Pakistani misadventures, if any, that will escalate the situation,” Wing Commander Vyomika Singh told a joint briefing by the Indian military and Ministry of External Affairs in the Indian capital.
“Operation Sindoor was launched by Indian Armed Forces to deliver justice to the victims of Pahalgam terror attack and their families.”
She said that Indian forces used niche technology weapons and carefully chose warheads to avoid collateral damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure, without providing more detail.
Sindoor, which refers to the vermilion powder worn by married Hindu women, is an apparent reference to the widows left by the April 22 attack, in which the victims were all men.
Indian officials showed footage of what they said were strikes on the targets in Pakistan during the Delhi briefing, as well as a map marking locations of what they said were “terror infrastructure.”
“Over the last three decades, Pakistan has systematically built terror infrastructure. It is a complex web of recruitment and indoctrination centers, training areas for initial and refresh of courses and launch pads for handlers. These camps are located both in Pakistan as well as Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir areas,” Singh said.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said India’s actions were “measured, non-escalatory, proportionate and responsible.”
“They focused on dismantling the terrorist infrastructure and disabling terrorists likely to be sent across to India.”
He said the strikes were launched because there was “no demonstrable step” from Pakistan to “take action against the terrorist infrastructure on its territory or on territory under its control” since the Pahalgam attack.
“Instead, all it has indulged in are denials and allegations. Our intelligence monitoring of Pakistan-based terrorist modules indicated that further attacks against India were impending,” he said.
Kashmir has been the subject of international dispute since the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Both countries claim the Himalayan region in full and rule in part, and have fought two of their three wars over it.
Indian-administered Kashmir has for decades witnessed outbreaks of separatist insurgency to resist control from the government in Delhi, which accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants since 1989. Islamabad has denied those allegations, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.
A Pakistan military spokesperson said at least 26 civilians were killed in the Indian strikes on Wednesday.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday the country’s top national security body had authorized its armed forces to take “corresponding actions” in response to the Indian strikes.
India and Pakistan have had near daily exchanges of fire across the de facto border, called the Line of Control, which divides disputed Kashmir between them.
On Wednesday morning, they also exchanged intense shelling and heavy gunfire across much of the frontier, which reportedly killed and injured dozens of civilians on both sides.
