Pakistan warns it will avenge deaths from Indian strikes

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan has warned that it will “avenge” those killed by Indian air strikes that New Delhi said were in response to an attack in Kashmir, signalling an imminent escalation in the worst violence in decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

At least 43 deaths have been reported so far, with Islamabad saying 31 civilians were killed by the Indian strikes and firing along the border, and New Delhi adding at least 12 dead from Pakistani shelling.

“We make this pledge that we will avenge each drop of the blood of these martyrs,” Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in an address to the nation late on May 7.

India’s army said it destroyed nine “terrorist camps” in Pakistan in the early hours of May 7, two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing an attack on tourists in the Indian-administered side of disputed Kashmir – a charge Pakistan denies.

Pakistan military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said five Indian jets had been downed across the border.

An Indian senior security source, who asked not to be named, said three of its fighter jets had crashed on home territory.

The two sides have exchanged heavy artillery fire along the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, which both countries claim in full but administer separately.

The South Asian neighbours have fought two full-scale wars over the divided territory since they were carved out of the Indian sub-continent after gaining independence from British rule in 1947.

“There were terrible sounds during the night, there was panic among everyone,” said Mr Muhammad Salman, who lives close to a mosque in Pakistan-administered Kashmir that was hit by an Indian strike.

Mr Tariq Mir, 24, who was hit in the leg by shrapnel, said: “We are moving to a safer place... we are homeless