The China Mail - Pakistan says India has brought neighbours 'closer to major conflict'

The bloody escalation comes after an attack on tourists last month in the Indian-run part of disputed Kashmir that killed 26 people and which New Delhi accused Islamabad of backing -- an allegation Pakistan denied.

India responded with air strikes Wednesday on what it called "terrorist camps" in Pakistan, fuelling the worst clashes between the two in decades.

On a third day of tit-for-tat exchanges since, the Indian army said it "repulsed" waves of Pakistani attacks using drones and other munitions overnight, and gave a "befitting reply".

India also accused Pakistani forces on Thursday of targeting three military stations -- two in Kashmir and one in the neighbouring state of Punjab.

Pakistan's Information Minister Ataullah Tarar said Pakistan had "not targeted any locations in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir, or across international border, so far".

The two countries have fought several wars over Kashmir since their independence from Britain in 1947.

- 'War hysteria' -

Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman said Friday that India's "jingoism and war hysteria" should be a source of serious concern for the world.

"It is most unfortunate that India's reckless conduct has brought the two nuclear-armed states closer to a major conflict," Shafqat Ali Khan told a briefing in the capital, Islamabad.

Pakistani security and government officials said five civilians -- including a two-year-old girl -- were killed by Indian shelling overnight in areas along the heavily militarised Line of Control (LoC), which divides Kashmir.

"In response, the Pakistan Army carried out a strong counterattack, targeting three Indian posts," police official Adeel Khan, told AFP from Kotli district, where four of the deaths occurred.

Pakistani military sources, meanwhile, said that its forces had shot down 77 Indian drones in the last two days, claiming they were Israeli-made.

In Indian-administered Kashmir, a police official said one woman was killed and two men wounded by heavy overnight shelling in Uri, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the state capital Srinagar.

"The youth of Kashmir will never forget this act of brutality by India," said 15-year-old Muhammad Bilal in Muzaffarabad, the main city in Pakistan-administered Kashmir where a mosque was hit in Wednesday's strikes.

In Jammu, also under Indian administration, 21-year-old student Piyush Singh said: "Our [attack] is justified because we are doing it for whatever happened to our civilians."

- Schools closed -

Pakistan has rejected claims by New Delhi that it was behind last month's attack in Pahalgam, Indian-administered Kashmir, when gunmen killed 26 people, mainly male Hindu tourists.

India blamed the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba -- a UN-designated terrorist organisation -- for the attack.

Militants have stepped up operations in Muslim-majority Kashmir since 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government revoked its limited autonomy and took the state under direct rule from New Delhi.

On Friday schools were closed on both sides of the Pakistan and Indian border in Kashmir and Punjab, affecting tens of millions of children.

India has also closed 24 airports, but according to local media the suspension on civilian flights may be lifted on Saturday morning.

The conflict has caused major disruption to international aviation, with airlines having to cancel flights or use longer routes that don't overfly the Indian-Pakistan frontier.

The mega Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament was on Friday suspended for a week, the Indian cricket board announced, a day after a fixture was abandoned in Dharamsala, less than 200 kilometres (125 miles) from Jammu, where explosions had been reported.

The Pakistan Super League, meanwhile, was moved to the United Arab Emirates, after an Indian drone struck Rawalpindi stadium on Thursday.

- Calls for de-escalation -

American Vice President JD Vance has called for de-escalation, while underlining that Washington was "not going to get involved in the middle of a war that's fundamentally none of our business".

Several countries have offered to mediate, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in New Delhi on Thursday, days after visiting Pakistan.

Diplomats and world leaders have pressured both countries for restraint.

However, the International Crisis Group said "foreign powers appear to have been somewhat indifferent" to the prospect of war, despite warnings of possible escalation.

"A combination of bellicose rhetoric, domestic agitation and the remorseless logic of military one-upmanship have heightened the risks of escalation, particularly because for some time there was no diplomatic communication between the sides," it said.

burs-ecl/fox

H.Au--ThChM