India launched airstrikes across nine sites in Pakistan overnight, adding to a decades-long list of military conflicts between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
The attack,followed the killing of 26 men, mostly tourists, in Indian Kashmir last month by Islamist assailants that India blamed on Pakistan.
The Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir is claimed by both countries, and has been the site of several wars, insurgency and diplomatic standoffs.
Armed rebels have resisted New Delhi for decades, with many Muslim Kashmiris supporting the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India accuses Pakistan of fomenting violence, a charge Islamabad denies.
Tens of thousands of civilians, insurgents and government forces have been killed in the conflict over the years.
Here is a look at the region, its history, and why it continues to be a source of tension between the two countries.
Partition and accession
After partition of the subcontinent in 1947 following independence from British rule, Kashmir was expected to become part of Pakistan, as with other Muslim-majority regions.
Its Hindu ruler wanted it to stay independent but, faced with an invasion by Muslim tribesmen from Pakistan, acceded to India in October 1947 in return for help against the invaders.
Kashmir ended up divided among Hindu-majority India, which governs the Kashmir Valley, Jammu, and Ladakh; Islamic Pakistan, which controls Azad Kashmir (‘Free Kashmir’) and the Northern Areas; and China, which holds Aksai Chin.
Indian-administered Kashmir has a population of around 7 million, of whom nearly 70% are Muslim.
Wars and military standoffs
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence, two of them over Kashmir, in 1947 and 1965.
A third in 1971 led to the creation of Bangladesh.
In 1999, they clashed again in the Kargil region in what was described as an undeclared war.
Timeline of conflict between India and Pakistan
1947 — Months after British India is partitioned into a predominantly Hindu India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, the two young nations fight their first war over control of Muslim-majority Kashmir, then a kingdom ruled by a Hindu monarch.
The war killed thousands before ending in 1948.
1949 — A UN-brokered ceasefire line leaves Kashmir divided between India and Pakistan, with the promise of a UN-sponsored vote that would enable the region’s people to decide whether to be part Pakistan or India. That vote has never been held.
1965 — The rivals fight their second war over Kashmir. Thousands are killed in inconclusive fighting before a ceasefire is brokered by the Soviet Union and the United States.
Negotiations in Tashkent run until January 1966, ending in both sides giving back territories they seized during the war and withdrawing their armies.
1971 — India intervenes in a war over the independence of East Pakistan, which ends with the territory breaking away as the new country of Bangladesh. An estimated 3 million people are killed in the conflict.
1972 — India and Pakistan sign a peace accord, renaming the ceasefire line in Kashmir as the Line of Control. Both sides deploy more troops along the frontier, turning it into a heavily fortified stretch of military outposts.
1989 — Kashmiri dissidents, with support from Pakistan, launch a bloody rebellion against Indian rule. Indian troops respond with brutal measures, intensifying diplomatic and military skirmishes between New Delhi and Islamabad.
1999 — Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri fighters seize several Himalayan peaks on the Indian side. India responds with aerial bombardments and artillery.
At least 1,000 combatants are killed over 10 weeks, and a worried world fears the fighting could escalate to nuclear conflict. The US eventually steps in to mediate, ending the fighting.
2016 — Militants sneak into an army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing at least 18 soldiers. India responds by sending special forces inside Pakistani-held territory, later claiming to have killed multiple suspected rebels in ‘surgical strikes’.
Pakistan denies that the strikes took place, but it leads to days of major border skirmishes. Combatants and civilians on both sides are killed.
2019 — The two sides again come close to war after a Kashmiri insurgent rams an explosive-laden car into a bus carrying Indian soldiers, killing 40.
India carries out airstrikes in Pakistani territory and claims to have struck a militant training facility. Pakistan later shoots down an Indian warplane and captures a pilot. He is later released, deescalating tensions.
2025 — Militants attack Indian tourists in the region’s resort town of Pahalgam and kill 26 men, most of them Hindus. India blames Pakistan, which denies it. India vows revenge on the attackers as tensions rise to their highest point since 2019.
Both countries cancel visas for each other’s citizens, recall diplomats, shut their only land border crossing and close their airspaces to each other. New Delhi also suspends a crucial water-sharing treaty.
A UN-brokered ceasefire line, the Line of Control, now divides the region.
The insurgency
Many Muslims in Indian Kashmir have long resented what they see as heavy-handed rule by India.
In 1989, that bubbled over into an insurgency by Muslim separatists.
India poured troops into the region and tens of thousands of people have been killed.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants, which Islamabad denies, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support.
Special status revoked
In August 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status in a move it said would better integrate the region with the rest of the country.
The state was reorganised into two federally administered union territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
Pakistan strongly objected, downgrading diplomatic ties with India.
Recent years
Modi says his 2019 decision brought normalcy to Kashmir after decades of bloodshed.
Violence has tapered off in recent years, according to Indian officials, with fewer large-scale attacks and rising tourist arrivals.
Targeted killings of civilians and security forces, however, were still reported.
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