CNN
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India has launched a major military operation against Pakistan in a major escalation of tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.

The missile strikes early Wednesday morning targeted “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan administered-Kashmir, according to India. Pakistan has denied the claim, saying the attack largely harmed civilians – killing at least three, including a child, and injuring at least a dozen.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the country had the right to respond to what he described as an “act of war,” adding that a “befitting reply is being given.”

Kashmir is one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints and is controlled in part by India and Pakistan but both countries claim it in its entirety.

Relations between India and Pakistan have cratered in recent weeks following a deadly rampage by gunmen who murdered 26 people, the majority Indian tourists, at a scenic spot in Kashmir.

India has long accused Pakistan of harboring militant groups that conduct attacks across the border, a charge Islamabad denies, and had vowed to retaliate against those they deemed responsible.

“These steps come in the wake of the barbaric Pahalgam terrorist attack in which 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen were murdered,” India’s Ministry of Defense said in a statement, referring to an attack last month tourists in India-administered Kashmir.

“Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution,” the statement added.

India said nine sites in total were targeted.

Multiple loud explosions have been heard in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, according to a CNN journalist.

Pakistan’s military said India struck with missiles.

“Pakistan will respond to it at a time and place of its own choosing,” Pakistani military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told Geo TV. “This heinous provocation will not go unanswered.”

Pakistani military sources told CNN five locations were struck at Kotli, Ahmadpur East, Muzaffarabad, Bagh, and Muridke.

Three of those locations – Kotli, Muzaffarabad and Bagh are in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Ahmadpur East and Muridke are both in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

According to preliminary damage assessment, only civilians and innocent Pakistanis were impacted by the strikes, the sources said.

Major world powers, including the United States, had urged restraint in the weeks after last month’s attack on tourists, fearful that a military conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir could quickly escalate.

The two nuclear-armed rivals have fought three wars over the mountainous territory that is now divided by a de-facto border called the Line of Control (LOC) since their independence from Britain nearly 80 years ago.

Tensions have been ratcheted up again after gunmen massacred 26 tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-controlled Kashmir last month, the deadliest assault on Indian civilians in recent years.

Wednesday’s strikes are the most significant military action since 2019, when Indian jets conducted airstrikes on several targets inside Pakistan, after it blamed Islamabad for a suicide car bomb attack that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary personnel in the region.

India has accused Pakistan of being involved in the Pahalgam attack — a claim Islamabad denies. Pakistan has offered a neutral investigation into the incident.

The massacre sparked immediate widespread anger in India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had been under tremendous pressure to retaliate with force.

In the days after the Pahalgam attack, both countries swiftly downgraded ties with each other and have since been engaging in escalating tit-for-tat hostilities.

India ordered its citizens to return from Pakistan, shut a major border crossing and suspended its involvement in a crucial water sharing treaty that has been in force since 1960.

Pakistan suspended trade with India and expelled Indian diplomats. It said that any attempt to stop or divert water belonging to Pakistan would be considered an “act of war.”

New Delhi and Islamabad had also been flexing their military might as tensions simmered along the LOC with small exchanges of fire across the demarcation in recent days. Both sides have also closed their air spaces to each other’s airlines.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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.

CNN
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Japan’s Emperor Emeritus Akihito will be admitted to hospital for heart tests on Tuesday, public broadcaster NHK reported, citing the Imperial Household Agency.

Akihito, 91, who is retired, is the father of Emperor Naruhito. He abdicated from the Chrysanthemum Throne in 2019, seven years after he had heart bypass surgery.

The former emperor will undergo tests at the University of Tokyo Hospital after signs of myocardial ischemia were found during a regular checkup last month, NHK reported, citing the Imperial Household Agency. The condition reduces blood flow to the heart muscle.

Akihito, who ascended to the throne after his father, Hirohito, died in 1989, became the first Japanese monarch in 200 years to abdicate his post.

He cited health reasons for standing down, having undergone heart surgery and been treated for prostate cancer in the years preceding his abdication.

A man prepared to break with tradition, Akihito was the first Japanese emperor to marry a commoner, speak to his subjects live on television, and be hands-on in raising his children.

The emperor is a ceremonial but revered figure in Japan’s constitutional monarchy. It is the oldest hereditary monarchy in the world, dating back 14 centuries.