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Pakistan says shot down 25 drones, India says destroyed air defense system in Lahore

A member of the Crime Scene Unit (CSU), inspects the fregments, of what they say is a drone, after it was brought down on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan May 8, 2025. (REUTERS)
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Updated 08 May 2025
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Pakistan says shot down 25 drones, India says destroyed air defense system in Lahore

  • Pakistan army says Israeli-made drones neutralized in at least nine locations including Lahore and near Karachi 
  • Indian defense ministry says “targeted air defense radars and systems at a number of locations in Pakistan” overnight 
Updated 08 May 2025
NAIMAT KHAN

KARACHI: The Pakistan military said on Thursday it had shot down 25 Israeli-made Harop drones launched by India at multiple locations, while India said it had “neutralized” Pakistan’s attempts to strike military targets with drones and missiles.

Fighting has escalated between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors since Wednesday when India said it struck nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites in Pakistan, some of them linked to an attack by militants that killed 26 in Indian-administered Kashmir on Apr. 22. Pakistan said 31 people were killed in the Indian strikes and vowed to retaliate, subsequently saying it had shot down five Indian aircraft and a combat drone.

The conflict between India and Pakistan has been confined in recent decades mostly to the disputed mountainous region of Kashmir. But the air strikes on Wednesday morning, which also hit the towns of Bahawalpur and Muridke in the heart of the country, were seen in Islamabad as a major escalation.

Early on Thursday morning, reports started emerging from multiple Pakistani cities of explosions and firing, including the two largest cities of the country, Karachi and Lahore.

The military’s media wing subsequently confirmed that India was “attacking Pakistan with Israeli-made Harop drones in panic.” 

The Harop is a standoff loitering munition attack weapon system designed to locate and precisely attack targets, manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries.

“So far, 25 Israeli-made Harop drones have been shot down by the Pakistani army’s soft kill (technical) and hard kill (weapons),” the army said in a statement. “The debris of Israeli-made Harop drones is being collected from different areas of Pakistan.”

 

 

In the context of military defense, hard kill refers to destroying or neutralizing an incoming threat, such as a missile or drone, by physically destroying it or its components. Soft kill, on the other hand, aims to defeat the threat by disrupting its guidance or communication signals, often using electronic countermeasures or decoys. 

One drone was shot down over the garrison city of Rawalpindi, military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a separate televised statement. Rawalpindi is home to the Pakistan army’s heavily fortified headquarters.

One drone hit a military target near Lahore, the capital and largest city of the province of Punjab, and the second-largest city in Pakistan after Karachi. Four personnel of the Pakistan army were injured in this attack, Chaudhry added. 

Other places where drones were neutralized were Gujranwala, Chakwal, Attock, Bahawalpur, Miano, Chor and near Karachi, which the country’s largest city and commercial capital. 

“As we speak, the process of India sending across these Harop drones, this naked aggression, continues, and the armed forces are on a high degree of alert and neutralizing them,” the army spokesman said. 

Earlier in the day, police reported a civilian casualty in the southern Sindh province, also confirmed by Chaudhry, when a drone crashed in the Sarfaraz Leghari village, located in Ghotki district.

“This morning, a drone fell over two villagers... killing one man and injuring another,” Senior Superintendent of Police Dr. Samiullah Soomro told Arab News over the phone, saying more details would be confirmed following a visit to the site.

“INDIAN RESPONSE”

India’s defense ministry said in a statement on Thursday Pakistan had launched an overnight air attack using “drones and missiles,” before New Delhi retaliated to destroy an air defense system in Lahore.

“Pakistan attempted to engage a number of military targets ... using drones and missiles,” according to the statement, adding that “these were neutralized” by air defense systems.

New Delhi said areas targeted included sites in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, and India’s Punjab state, including the key cities of Amritsar, Ludhiana, Chandigarh, as well as Bhuj in Gujarat state.

“The debris of these attacks is now being recovered from a number of locations,” it added.

The defense ministry said on Thursday morning its military had “targeted air defense radars and systems at a number of locations in Pakistan,” saying the “response has been in the same domain, with the same intensity, as Pakistan.”

It added that it had been “reliably learnt that an air defense system at Lahore has been neutralized.”

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif has rejected the claims, saying there was no damage to air defenses in Lahore. 

India also accused Pakistan of having “increased the intensity of its unprovoked firing across the Line of Control using mortars and heavy caliber artillery” across the de facto border in Jammu and Kashmir

India said the number of people who had been killed by Pakistani firing since the escalation of violence on Wednesday had risen to 16, including three women and five children.

Speaking in parliament, Pakistani Information Ministers said Pakistan had killed 40-50 Indian soldiers and destroyed a brigade headquarter along the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides Kashmir between the two nations. The claims could not be independently verified.

 

 

India and Pakistan have fought three wars in the past, two of them over Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part. 

Since April 22, they have intensified firing and shelling across the Line of Control.

For decades India has accused Pakistan of supporting militants in attacks on Indian interests, especially in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan denies such support and in turn accuses India of backing separatist and other insurgents in Pakistan, which New Delhi denies.

With inputs from AFP and Reuters

Topics: Pakistan India match Pakistan India India strikes Pakistan Pakistan India Ties

Walnut tree remains ‘under arrest’ for over a century, living symbol of colonial power in Pakistan

Updated 4 sec ago
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Walnut tree remains ‘under arrest’ for over a century, living symbol of colonial power in Pakistan

  • British officer is said to have ordered chaining of the tree in 1898, a reminder of the absolute authority and psychological control enforced under colonial rule in Khyber Pass region
  • Locals and historians say the shackled tree survives as a physical memory of the Frontier Crimes Regulation era, when even nature could be punished to discipline subjects and display power
Updated 4 sec ago
WASIM SAJJAD

LANDI KOTAL, KHYBER: In the military cantonment of Landi Kotal, close to Pakistan’s Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan and the mouth of the historic Khyber Pass, a single walnut tree stands bound in heavy iron chains.

It has been this way for more than a century, a surreal, almost absurd monument to the power structures and punitive imagination of the British Empire’s rule in the tribal frontier.

Black shackles still brace parts of its branches, giving it the appearance of a theatrical installation. To locals, it is a wound that never fully healed, a reminder that even nature could be punished when authority wished to show dominance.

Local oral histories trace the origin of this bizarre imprisonment to 1898, when a British officer named James Squid, allegedly intoxicated, believed the tree was moving toward him and instantly ordered it arrested. Soldiers carried out the instruction and the walnut tree has never been freed since.

Muhammad Sardar, the caretaker who oversees the site today, recounted the story as it has been passed down for generations.

“This British military official at that time was drunk and thought this walnut tree was moving toward him to attack him,” he told Arab News. “The officer ordered to arrest this tree, hence the soldiers had to obey the order and arrest this tree.”

Whether the event unfolded exactly as described is impossible to verify, but historians and residents agree on what the continued chaining represented: the unquestionable authority of colonial power.

A LAW THAT COULD BIND PEOPLE — AND TREES

Landi Kotal was one of the most militarized points of the British-controlled frontier, a strategic chokepoint along the Khyber Pass, a route armies, traders and empires have used for thousands of years. To control the region, the British introduced the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), a law that denied locals the right to appeal, hire lawyers or challenge government decisions. Entire tribes could be punished for the suspected action of one member.

The chained walnut tree is often interpreted as a physical embodiment of that era: a warning made visible.

Dr. Syed Waqar Ali Shah, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Peshawar, said the symbolism was deliberate.

“It was an assertion of their [British] authority, it was a symbol of their power. Right. It’s a funny thing as well, because it’s something which was under the influence of some intoxication,” he explained.

“The officer behaved or gave orders for the imprisonment of that particular tree under the influence of some intoxicants.”

Dr. Shah continued:

“It was something which was a symbol of colonial authority, assertion of their authority, of bureaucratic diplomacy, a symbol of their bureaucratic strength and power, and maybe some cultural encounter as well.”

He added that such displays endured because “it was a cultural link between the locals and the colonial power. So it was a reflection of that. But later on, they continued with it in the presence of FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulation) and regulations like this.”

Even once the officer sobered, the chains remained.

Dr. Shah believes that was intentional: psychological messaging meant to instill conformity and fear in people living under colonial law.

“Their objective and purpose was to make it a symbol of discipline for the masses. It was an exhibition of power, a sheer exhibition of power, a symbol that if we can do this to something which was inhuman … if they can deal with a tree like this, so the general public, they should be aware that discipline is very important.”

Landi Kotal’s older residents say their fathers and grandfathers retold the story long before Pakistan existed and long before independence movements dismantled the Raj.

Usman Khan Shinwari, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, said the story continues to live in households like a family inheritance.

“My grandfather would often narrate this story of the arrested tree,” he recalled. “My grandfather would say that it shows how the then rulers were treating the locals and what our ancestors had endured.”

Over a century later, long after the end of British rule and the formal abolition of the Frontier Crimes Regulation in 2018, the walnut tree remains exactly where it was chained, part spectacle, part scar.

Tourists sometimes come to photograph it. Others stand silently before it.

But for many in Khyber, it is neither attraction nor curiosity.

It is proof that power once flowed one way only. A tree could be punished, so people learned not to resist.

Topics: Landi Kotal khyber agency

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