NEW DELHI: Saudi Arabia’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir made a surprise visit to India on Thursday to meet External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, amid escalating tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Al-Jubeir’s trip comes a day after India launched Operation Sindoor, hitting nine locations in Pakistan’s densely populated Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, from where Delhi said terrorist attacks against India had been planned and directed.

Jaishankar said on X that he had a “good meeting” with Al-Jubeir on Thursday morning, during which he “shared India’s perspectives on firmly countering terrorism.”

India said Wednesday’s missile strikes were in response to an attack on tourists near the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22, in which 26 people — 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen — were killed.

At least 31 people were killed in the retaliatory strikes, Pakistani officials said. With the two militaries engaged in escalating exchanges, world leaders have urged both sides to exercise restraint and called for a de-escalation of hostilities.

Kashmir has been the subject of 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 denies the allegations, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.