2025 India–Pakistan conflict

Overview

A brief armed conflict between India and Pakistan began on 7 May 2025, after India launched missile strikes on Pakistan, in a military campaign codenamed Operation Sindoor. India said that the operation was in response to the Pahalgam attack in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir on 22 April 2025 in which 26 civilians were killed. India accused Pakistan of supporting cross-border terrorism, which Pakistan denied.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Significance

Operation Sindoor marked the first direct Indian missile strikes on Pakistani territory within the broader Kashmir conflict that began in 1947. India framed the strikes as a response to the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025, in which 26 civilians were killed in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, and cited Pakistani support for cross-border terrorism as justification. Pakistan denied those accusations. The episode represented a significant escalation between the two nuclear-armed states, with senior political and military leadership on both sides — including Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif and their respective chiefs of defence — directly engaged. Indian casualties were recorded at 400. The result of the conflict was not conclusively recorded, but the exchange marked a threshold in the decades-long dispute over Kashmir, moving from proxy and insurgent-level confrontation to direct state-on-state missile strikes.

Forces & casualties

Commanders (6)