Pak escalates, India blunts attack

In a severe escalation on Thursday evening, Pakistan fired eight missiles directed at Satwari, Samba, RS Pura and Arnia, all in Jammu & Kashmir, which were all intercepted or blocked by air defence units, defence sources said late Thursday evening.

- ANJALI KUMARI & ABHISHEK KUMAR

Indian security forces also detected Pakistani drone and munitions over Jammu city, Pathankot and Jaisalmer, with sources saying that air defence and counter drone systems were engaging the intruders.

According to defence sources, the scenes playing out over Jammu were reminiscent of Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which involved "multiple cheap rockets". The sources assessed that the Pakistan Army was operating and behaving like Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by many countries. Sources also said that members of Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Hamas had met in Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir recently.

The defence ministry said military stations of Jammu, Pathankot, and Udhampur were targeted, with the Indian armed forces neutralising the threat according to the standard operating procedures with kinetic and non-kinetic means. Electricity in cities of Jammu, Pathankot and other areas under Pakistani attack was snapped leading to a complete blackout. There were blackouts in Amritsar, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Mohali in Punjab and Union Territory Chandigarh too. An Indian Premier League match in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, 80 km from the Pathankot airbase, was called off. Power supply was restored in some of these cities later in the night.