India Says It Struck ‘Terrorist Infrastructure’ in Pakistan, Braces for Threatened Response Amidst Pak Claim of Downing Five Fighter Jets; 15 Civilians Killed by Pakistani Gunfire Near LoC

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

May 7, 2025

Sidharth Bhatia

In the aftermath of India’s missile strikes on “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir before dawn today in retribution for the Pahalgam terror attack and which it dubbed ‘Operation Sindoor’ – which the top Pakistani defence spokesperson said this morning killed 26 civilians and injured 46 others – Islamabad’s defence minister Khwaja Asif has said that “if India backs down, we will definitely wrap up this tension”. “But as long as we are under attack, under fire” he continued in an interview to Bloomberg Television, “we have to respond, we have to defend ourselves”.

Earlier, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office had called the strikes an “unprovoked, cowardly and unlawful act of war” and