BALAKOT, Pakistan (AP) — A pre-dawn airstrike inside Pakistan that India said targeted a terrorist training camp and killed a “very large number” of militants ratcheted up tensions on Tuesday between the two nuclear-armed rivals at odds over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Islamabad said there were no casualties in the strike near the town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s sector of Kashmir, where residents said loud explosions woke them up, rattling their homes.
“It was the middle of the night, we were very scared,” one resident, 20-year old Mohammad Abbas to The Associated Press. “We didn’t think for a moment that it was from planes but the explosions were very powerful.”
Pakistan’s military cordoned off the area and kept reporters about a kilometer (half a mile) from the bombing site.
The airstrike was the latest escalation since a deadly suicide bombing in India’s section of Kashmir earlier this month killed more than 40 Indian soldiers. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack but vowed to respond to any Indian military operation against it.
Kashmir is split between the two countries but claimed by each in its entirety. The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad claimed responsibility for the bombing. The bomber, who made a video before the attack, was a resident of Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir.
Pakistan’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor, said Indian planes crossed into the Muzafarabad sector of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. He said Pakistan scrambled fighters and the Indian jets “released payload in haste” near Balakot.
India’s foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, told reporters in New Delhi that Indian fighter jets targeted Jaish-e-Mohammad camps in a pre-emptive strike after intelligence indicated another attack was being planned.
“Acting on intelligence, India early today stuck the biggest training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammad in Balakot,” he said. “In this operation a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and jihadis being trained were eliminated.”
Balakot police chief Saghir Hussain Shah said he had sent teams to the area where the Indian bombs reportedly hit, which he described as a mostly deserted wooded area. “There are no casualties, there are no damages on the ground,” he said. There was no immediate explanation for the differing accounts, but India and Pakistan routinely contradict one another.
The Feb. 14 attack in Indian-ruled Kashmir was the worst attack on Indian forces since the start of the 1989 insurgency in Kashmir and came as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the middle of a re-election campaign.
Addressing a rally of former soldier’s in the Indian state of Rajasthan hours after the airstrike, Modi said India was in “safe hands.”
“I vow that I will not let the country bow down,” he said.
China, a close ally of Pakistan, urged both sides to show restraint.
