By Adnan Abidi, Aftab Ahmed and Saeed Shah
LAHORE/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Blasts rang out across the city of Jammu in Indian Kashmir late on Thursday during what Indian military sources said they suspected was a Pakistani drone attack across the region on the second day of clashes between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Sirens sounded and red flashes and projectiles could be seen in the night sky above the city, a Reuters journalist said. Several parts of Jammu and the surrounding towns of Akhnoor, Samba and Kathua came under attack, said an Indian official who asked not to be named.
“Our army installations are under attack, it is happening in five districts of Jammu (region),” a security official told Reuters.
There was no immediate comment from Pakistan on what appeared to be an escalation in the countries’ worst confrontation in more than two decades.
Pakistan’s Defence Minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, had earlier said further retaliation was “increasingly certain” after both countries accused each other of launching drone attacks.
India said it hit nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites in Pakistan on Wednesday in retaliation for what it says was a deadly Islamabad-backed attack in Indian Kashmir on April 22.
Pakistan says it was not involved and denied that any of the sites hit by India were militant bases. It said it shot down five Indian aircraft on Wednesday, a report the Indian embassy in Beijing dismissed as “misinformation”.
Pakistan said earlier on Thursday it shot down 25 drones from India overnight, while India said it air defences had stopped Pakistani drone and missile attacks on military targets.
World powers from the U.S. to Russia and China have called for calm in one of the world’s most dangerous, and most populated, nuclear flashpoint regions. The U.S. Consulate General in Pakistan’s Lahore ordered staff to shelter in place.
(Reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore, Saurabh Sharma in Amritsar, Shivam Patel, Tanvi Mehta, Surbhi Misra in New Delhi, Saeed Shah, Charlotte Greenfield, Gibran Peshimam and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Ariba Shahid in Karachi, Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar; Additional reporting by Shakeel Ahmad in Bengaluru and Colleen Howe in Beijing; Writing by Sakshi Dayal and YP Rajesh; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Andrew Heavens, William Maclean)
