Pakistan launches military offensive against India as conflict escalates

ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI – Pakistan said it launched a military operation against India early on Saturday, targeting multiple bases including a missile storage site in northern India as the neighbors extended their worst fighting in nearly three decades.Pakistan’s offensive came shortly after it said India had fired missiles at three air bases earlier on Saturday including one close to the capital, Islamabad, but Pakistani air defenses intercepted most of them.Locked in a longstanding dispute over Kashmir, the two countries have engaged in daily clashes since Wednesday when India launched strikes inside Pakistan on what it called militant bases.Pakistan vowed to retaliate.“BrahMos storage site has been taken out in general area Beas,” Pakistan’s military said in a message to journalists, adding that the Pathankot Airfield in India’s western Punjab state and Udhampur Air Force Station in Indian Kashmir were also hit.India’s defense and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

India’s military was expected to brief the media shortly, the ministry of defense said.Pakistan’s information minister said in a post on social media site X that the military operation was named “Operation Bunyanun Marsoos”.The term is taken from the Koran that means a firm, united structure.Sounds of explosions were reported in India’s Srinagar and Jammu, where sirens were sounded, a Reuters witness said.“India through its planes, launched air to surface missiles … Nur Khan base, Mureed base and Shorkot base were made targets,” Pakistan military spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a late-night televised statement.One of the air bases is in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital Islamabad, and the other two are in Pakistan’s eastern province of Punjab, which borders India.The Pakistani military spokesman said only a few missiles made it past air defenses, and thos...