Islamabad, Pakistan / New Delhi, India
CNN
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India launched military strikes on Pakistan on Wednesday and Pakistan claimed it shot down five Indian Air Force jets, in an escalation that has pushed the two nations to the brink of war.

The escalation puts India and Pakistan, two neighbors with a long history of conflict, in dangerous territory, with Islamabad vowing to retaliate against India’s strikes and the international community calling for restraint.

New Delhi said the strikes are in response to the massacre of 26 people – mostly Indian tourists – who died in April when gunmen stormed a scenic mountain spot in the India-administered part of Kashmir, a disputed border region. India has blamed Pakistan for the attack, which Islamabad denies.

Here’s what we know so far.

India launched “Operation Sindoor” in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time (Tuesday night ET), saying it was targeting “terrorist infrastructure” in both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Indian officials said nine sites were targeted, but claimed no Pakistani civilian, economic or military sites were struck.

The name ‘Sindoor’ appears to be a reference to the red vermilion, or powder, many Hindu women wear on their foreheads after marriage. The April tourist massacre left several Indian women widowed.

But Pakistan is painting a different picture of the strikes – saying civilians were killed and that mosques were hit. CNN has yet to verify those claims.

A Pakistani military spokesperson said six locations were hit with 24 strikes. Some of those strikes hit the densely populated province of Punjab, Pakistan’s military said, and were the deepest India has struck inside Pakistan since 1971, when the two countries fought one of their four wars.

Pakistani security sources claimed they had shot down five Indian Air Force jets and one drone during India’s attack.

They did not say exactly where, or how, the jets were downed – but said three Rafale jets were among those planes. India’s Rafale fighters jets are prized military assets that it only bought from France a few years ago.

India has not confirmed any planes were lost. CNN has not been able to verify the claim and has reached out to India’s government and military for comment.

An eyewitness and local government official said an unidentified aircraft crashed in the village of Wuyan in Indian-administered Kashmir. Photos published by the AFP news agency showed aircraft wreckage lying in a field next to a red-brick building.

It was not immediately clear from the photos who the aircraft belonged to.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday the country “has every right” to respond, calling India’s actions an “act of war.”

Eight people were killed and 35 were wounded by India’s strikes, according to Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s military. Those killed include teenagers and children – the youngest of whom was three years old, he said.

Three civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir were also killed in shelling by Pakistani troops from across the border, according to the Indian Army.

On Wednesday, the two sides also exchanged shelling and gunfire across the Line of Control (LOC), the de facto border that divides Kashmir.

Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir have ordered citizens to evacuate from areas deemed dangerous, saying accommodation, food and medicine will be provided.

The strikes have disrupted flights, with Pakistan closing parts of its airspace. Multiple major international airlines are avoiding flying over Pakistan, while several Indian airlines have reported disrupted flights and closed airports in the country’s north.

Some context: There have been regular exchanges of gunfire along the Line of Control in the weeks following the Pahalgam massacre.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been a flashpoint in India-Pakistan relations since both countries gained their independence from Britain in 1947.

The two nations to emerge from the bloody partition of British India – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – both claim Kashmir in full and, months after becoming independent, fought their first of three wars over the territory.

The divided region is now one of the most militarized places in the world.

India has long accused Pakistan of harboring militant groups there that conduct attacks across the border, something Islamabad has long denied.

The massacre in the tourist hotspot of Pahalgam in April sparked widespread anger in India, putting heavy pressure on the Hindu-nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India immediately blamed Islamabad, sparking tit-for-tat retaliatory measures in which both countries downgraded ties, canceled visas for each other’s citizens, and saw India pull out of a key water-sharing treaty.

The three previous wars over Kashmir have each been bloody; the last one in 1999 killed more than a thousand Pakistani troops, by the most conservative estimates.

In the decades since, militant groups have fought Indian security forces, with violence killing tens of thousands. The two countries have clashed multiple times, most recently in 2019 when India conducted airstrikes in Pakistan after it blamed Islamabad for a suicide car bomb attack in the region.

But those recent clashes did not explode into all-out war. Both sides are aware of the risks; since 1999, the two countries have worked to strengthen their militaries, including arming themselves with nuclear weapons.

The strikes have raised global alarm and pleas for the two nations to prevent further escalation.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres voiced “deep concern” over India’s strikes, warning that the world “cannot afford a military confrontation” between the two nations.

The United States – which had urged restraint from both countries last week – said it was “closely monitoring developments,” according to a State Department spokesperson.

“We are aware of the reports, however we have no assessment to offer at this time,” the spokesperson said Tuesday. “This remains an evolving situation, and we are closely monitoring developments.”

The United Arab Emirates, China and Japan have also called for both sides to de-escalate.

A senior Indian government official told CNN that New Delhi had briefed its international counterparts on the steps it had taken – including the US, UAE, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

By the numbers, India’s military would be seen as superior to Pakistan’s in any conventional conflict.

The Indian defense budget is more than nine times Pakistan’s, according to this year’s edition of “The Military Balance,” an assessment of armed forces by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

That budget supports an active-duty Indian force of almost 1.5 million personnel, compared to 660,000 for Pakistan.

On the ground, India’s 1.2 million-strong army has 3,750 main battle tanks and more than 10,000 artillery pieces, while Pakistan’s tank force is only two-thirds of India’s and Islamabad has fewer than half of the artillery pieces in New Delhi’s arsenal.

At sea, the Indian navy’s advantage is overwhelming. It has two aircraft carriers, 12 guided-missile destroyers, 11 guided-missile frigates and 16 attack submarines.

Pakistan has no carriers and no guided-missile destroyers, with 11 smaller guided-missile frigates being the backbone of its naval fleet. It also has only half the number of subs that India fields.

Both air forces rely heavily on older Soviet-era aircraft, including MiG-21s in India and the Chinese equivalent – the J-7 – in Pakistan.

India has been investing in multirole French-made Rafale jets, with 36 now in service, according to “The Military Balance.”

Pakistan has added Chinese J-10 multirole jets, with more than 20 now in its fleet.

Though Pakistan still has dozens of US-made F-16 fighters, the backbone of its fleet has become the JF-17, a joint project with China that came online in the early 2000s. About 150 are in service.

Russian-made aircraft play a significant role in India’s air fleet, with more than 100 MiG-29 fighters in service with the air force and navy combined, plus over 260 Su-30 ground attack jets.

The rivals are closer in capabilities when it comes to nuclear forces, with around five dozen surface-to-surface launchers each, though Indian has longer-range ballistic missiles than Pakistan.

CNN
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A ship that US and Philippine forces planned to sink beat them to it.

A former US World War II-era warship, which survived two of the Pacific War’s most important battles, was supposed to go down in a blaze of glory in a live-fire exercise off the western coast of the Philippines as part of annually held joint military drills.

Instead, before the bombs and missiles could fly, it slipped slowly beneath the South China Sea Monday morning, age and the ocean catching up to it before modern weaponry could decimate it.

The ex-USS Brattleboro was to be the main target for the maritime strike (MARSTRIKE) portion of the annual US-Philippine “Balikatan” exercise, which began April 21 and runs to May 9.

“The vessel was selected because it exceeded its service life and was no longer suitable for normal operations,” according to a statement from the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

A US Navy spokesperson told USNI News last month that the 81-year-old ship was to be the target for US Marine Corps F/A-18 fighter jets during the exercise. A report from the official Philippine News Agency (PNA) said it was to be hit by US and Philippine forces with a combination of anti-ship missiles, bombs and automatic cannon fire.

But as the 184-foot-long vessel was being towed to its station for the exercise, 35 miles west of Zambales province on the northern Philippine island of Luzon, it took on water, the Philippine military statement said.

“Due to rough sea conditions that we are currently experiencing in the exercise box and with its long service life, as is expected, she took on a significant amount of water and eventually sank,” Philippine Navy spokesperson Capt. John Percie Alcos said, according to PNA. He said the vessel was not damaged while being towed.

The ship sank quietly at 7:20 a.m. local time near the spot where it was to be obliterated later in the day, according to the Philippine military.

Other elements of the MARSTRKE exercise would go on, the military statement said.

The Philippine and US joint task forces “will rehearse virtual and constructive fire missions,” the statement said, without detailing what elements were still scheduled as part of the drill. “The combined force will still achieve its training objectives,” it added.

The Philippine military said there was no environmental danger from the sinking as the vessel had been cleaned before being towed out for the exercise.

The sinking of the ex-USS Brattleboro was a quiet end for a ship that distinguished itself across decades.

In World War II, it participated in the battles of Leyte Gulf and Okinawa, two key US defeats of Imperial Japanese forces in 1944 and 1945 respectively.

The ship, designated as a submarine chaser, served in a key rescue and air defense role in the Battle of Leyte during the US invasion of the Philippines, according to the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).

Over the course of a month, it helped get more than 400 wounded soldiers from shore to larger hospital ships and shot down a Japanese aircraft, according to the NHHC.

After further combat around the island of Palau and later again in the Philippines, Brattleboro got orders to head to Okinawa to support the US invasion there in the spring of 1945.

The invasion of Okinawa commenced on April 1, and “over the next 91 days, the subchaser treated over 200 badly wounded men and rescued in excess of 1,000 survivors of ships that sank,” the NHC history says.

After being retired from US service in the mid-1960s, the ship was transferred to the South Vietnamese military in 1966.

With the fall of Saigon in 1975, the then-South Vietnamese ship was transferred to the Philippines, where it was recommissioned as the Miguel Malvar – a hero of the Philippine revolution – in the Philippine Navy in 1977.

It was decommissioned in 2021.

Monday’s ship-sinking exercise was planned in an offshore area facing the hotly disputed Scarborough Shoal, which has been closely guarded by the Chinese coast guard, navy and suspected militia ships, according to the Associated Press. The Philippines also claims the fishing atoll, which lies about 137 miles west of Zambales.

This year’s Balikatan, called “shoulder-to-shoulder” in Tagalag, involves more than 14,000 Filipino and US troops in exercises designed to be a “full battle test” between the two defense treaty allies in response to regional security concerns.

China and the Philippines have faced increasing clashes in the waters near Scarborough Shoal in recent years, as China exerts its disputed sovereignty over the entirety of the vast South China Sea. And tensions between Beijing and Manila are their worst in years amid concerns of military conflict.

China has vehemently opposed such exercises involving US forces in or near the South China Sea.