Indian foreign minister has announced that his country launched airstrikes into Pakistan territory and killed dozens of militants, trainers, and senior commanders. The airstrikes are retaliatory for an attack in India conducted by jihadis from Pakistan.
On Feb. 14, a suicide car bombing killed some 40 Indian troops in a convoy on the outskirts of Srinagar, one of the largest cities in Indian-controlled Kashmir. It was the deadliest such attack in three decades in Kashmir, a Himalayan territory that’s split between Indian and Pakistani zones.
A Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed), a U.S.-designated terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group is banned in both countries, but India accuses Pakistan of tacitly supporting the group. Islamabad denies that. The bomber himself was a local Kashmiri man.
Tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan have seldom been higher — even before Tuesday’s incursion. After a suicide car bomb earlier this month in disputed Kashmir, the two countries recalled their envoys from each other’s capitals and vowed to use military firepower if the other attacked first.
