Muzaffarabad (Pakistan) (AFP) - India and Pakistan exchanged heavy artillery along their contested frontier on Wednesday, after New Delhi launched deadly missile strikes on its arch-rival in the worst violence between the nuclear-armed neighbours in two decades.

Islamabad reported 26 civilians killed by the Indian strikes and firing along the border, while New Delhi said at least eight were killed by Pakistani shelling.

India said it carried out “precision strikes at terrorist camps” at nine sites in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in Punjab state, days after it blamed Islamabad for backing a deadly attack on the Indian-run side of the disputed region.

The Indian army said “justice is served”, with New Delhi adding that its actions “have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of launching the strikes to “shore up” his domestic popularity, but said that Islamabad had struck back.

“The retaliation has already started”, Asif told AFP. “We won’t take long to settle the score.”

Asif claimed five “enemy aircraft” were downed by Pakistan, without giving further details and after backtracking on an earlier statement that Indian soldiers had been captured.

An Indian senior security source, who asked not to be named, meanwhile said three Indian fighter jets crashed on Wednesday on home territory without giving a cause.

It was not immediately clear what happened to the pilots.

Wreckage of an Indian fighter jet was seen by an AFP photographer at Wuyan – on the Indian controlled side of Kashmir.

- ‘Shelling raining down’ -

Islamabad said a three-year-old child was among eight civilians killed in the strikes.

In Muzaffarabad, the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, troops cordoned off streets around a mosque Islamabad said was hit, with marks of explosions also visible on the walls of several homes.

Shortly after, India’s army accused Pakistan of “indiscriminate” firing across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border in Kashmir, with bursts of flame as shells landed, AFP reporters saw.

“We woke up as we heard the sound of firing”, Farooq, a man in the Indian town of Poonch, told the Press Trust of India news agency from his hospital bed, his head wrapped in a bandage. “I saw shelling raining down… two persons were wounded”.

At least eight Indians were killed and 29 others wounded in the town, local revenue officer Azhar Majid told AFP from the town’s hospital.

India had been widely expected to respond militarily to the April 22 attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir by gunmen it said were from Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.

The assault in the tourist hotspot of Pahalgam left 26 people dead, mainly Hindu men.

No group has claimed responsibility but New Delhi has blamed Islamabad for backing the attack, sparking a series of heated threats and diplomatic tit-for-tat measures.

Pakistan rejects the accusations and called for independent probe.

The two sides have exchanged nightly gunfire since April 24 along the LoC, according to the Indian army. Pakistan also said it has held two missile tests.

- ‘Maximum restraint’ -

The violence is a dangerous escalation between the South Asian neighbours, who have fought multiple wars since they were carved out of the sub-continent at the end of British rule in 1947.

The assaults already exceed India’s strikes in 2019, when New Delhi said it had hit “several militants” after a suicide bomber attacked an Indian security force convoy, killing 40.

“India’s strike on Pakistan is of much greater scale than the one in 2019… Pakistan’s response… has also exceeded the scale of 2019”, US-based analyst Michael Kugelman said.

Diplomats have piled pressure on leaders to step back from the brink of war.

“The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan,” the spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington he hoped that the fighting “ends very quickly”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken to top security officials in both New Delhi and Islamabad since the strikes and said he was monitoring the situation “closely”.

India’s army said it had “demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution”, adding that “no Pakistani military facilities have been targeted”.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, calling the Indian attack “unprovoked” and “cowardly”, said the “heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished.”

Rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.

India regularly blames its neighbour for backing armed groups fighting its forces in Kashmir, a charge that Islamabad denies.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected in New Delhi on Wednesday, two days after a visit to Islamabad, as Tehran seeks to mediate.

India was also set to hold several civil defence drills Wednesday, while schools in Pakistan Punjab and Kashmir were closed, local government officials said.

The strikes came just hours after Modi said that water flowing across India’s borders would be stopped. Pakistan had warned that tampering with the rivers that flow from India into its territory would be an “act of war”.

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