India launches Operation Sindoor with strikes in Pakistan and Kashmir

India launched Operation Sindoor before dawn on 7 May 2025, striking locations in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Indian officials said the targets were infrastructure used by groups linked to the 22 April attack on tourists near Pahalgam.

Pakistan said civilian sites and residents were hit and responded militarily. India described the operation as measured and non-escalatory and said it had not targeted Pakistani military facilities in the opening wave. Those state descriptions require corroboration from site evidence and casualty identification.

The attack crossed an international frontier and the Line of Control between nuclear-armed states. India's self-defence claim depended on attribution, necessity and proportionality, while Pakistan's responses were independently bound by the same constraints governing force and civilian protection.

Air combat, artillery exchanges, drone attacks and competing claims of destroyed aircraft followed. Wartime claims about losses varied and cannot be settled by the number of social-media images without authentication and location.

This record focuses on India's initial strikes, separate from the Pahalgam attack and the ceasefire on 10 May. It avoids collective blame against Pakistani civilians and does not treat an alleged militant presence as proof that every person or structure at a targeted site was lawfully attackable.

Civil aviation was disrupted and communities on both sides prepared shelters as the exchange widened. Those precautionary effects are relevant to civilian harm even when a location was not directly struck or an aircraft loss remained disputed.