India launches strike against Pakistan in wake of tourist massacre

Welcome to the brief.

I'm Jim Sciutto in New York.

We begin early today

with breaking news,

India launching a military operation

targeting what it calls

terrorist infrastructure inside Pakistan

and Pakistan administered Kashmir.

Those are the sounds of explosions.

During those strikes,

India says it struck nine targets,

adding that none of them are Pakistani

military facilities.

A Pakistani military

spokesperson says the country

will respond to those attacks,

adding that at least

three people have been killed

in the Indian strikes.

This comes after gunmen killed twenty six people

in Indian administered

Kashmir last month.

India blamed Pakistan for those attacks.

Nic Robertson is live now in Islamabad,

and it's worth reminding our viewers

that these are two nuclear

armed nations

that have fired at each other before.

Tell us what the situation is

now and concerns about escalation now.

There's a real concern about escalation.

Pakistan vowed that if India attacked

that they would respond.

That was part of their military doctrine.

They believe,

and I've been speaking over the past

few days with very senior, very senior

security officials here.

And they believe

that this incident inside

Indian controlled

Kashmir, where twenty six civilians were killed,

that India blamed on Pakistan,

that Pakistan denied,

they believe that this had now come up.

The relations with India

had now come to a moment,

a defining moment

where Pakistan

needs to take a definitive stand

because India has threatened

to cut off water supplies coming down

three major rivers.

Vital existential

security officials describe

the water from those rivers.

So this is the sort of context to why

that this is at a moment of extreme

potential escalation.

Pakistani security

officials are saying that they are

right now

that Air Force right now is in the

in the throes of delivering

what they describe as a crushing blow

to India as a response for this strike.

Previously, when I've spoken

with Pakistani officials

over the past few days,

they've said that

if India's retaliatory strike,

which they thought was coming.

They said if it just came in

Pakistan administered Kashmir,

that would be something

that would be more easily tolerable

than striking

Pakistan proper, if you will.

At least two of the strikes

we understand this evening

and we're getting

these early details

are in Pakistan proper.

This tells me, from what

the officials have been speaking about,

that this will demand

from the Pakistani side

a much higher level of response.

Again, this speaks to the potential

for escalation.

How does India respond to this?

One of those strikes in Muridke inside

Pakistan proper was literally

just about twenty miles from the border

with India.

So for their fighter jets,

if that's what it was

to come over and strike,

that was a relatively easy operation.

However,

if these

strikes have been on the audible,

if you will, outskirts of Islamabad.

Our cameraman here with me, Javid,

his house is about an hour

from where we are

in the center of Islamabad.

His house shook.

There were two loud explosions,

he said,

and his house shook

from those explosions.

So that gives you an idea

how close some of the strikes

have been to Islamabad,

perhaps about fifty, sixty, seventy kilometres away.

The other explosions

I was describing that have happened

elsewhere in Pakistan

have also been near

the major city of Lahore,

the sort of very outer reaches of that.

So again,

these are very strong signals,

if you will, that the

that the Indian military

is sending to the Pakistani government.

Again, it speaks

to the potential for escalation,

and we have to wait and see what

Pakistan's response is, what it's been.

They describe it as crushing.

We don't have details yet.

And what and and therefore

what India may do after that. Jim.

Nic,

I wonder, given that India's strikes

and this is notable to your point, struck

both inside

Pakistan controlled

Kashmir and inside Pakistan proper.

Is it reasonable to expect

that crushing blow,

as Pakistani officials are describing

it might do the same in kind

that is strike inside

Indian administered Kashmir,

but also perhaps inside India itself?

I think there's a genuine

potential for that.

And the military here

have released pictures

of some of the victims

of the overnight attack from India.

And the first assessment of the Pakistani

military here

is that

they only have civilian casualties.

And some of the images they released show

women and children,

bloodied and, inside a hospital.

So again,

that the fact that women and children

have been injured, beyond, military age

males is going to,

if you will, ratchet up

the potential for response now

and the Pakistan's military

is describing the casualties

that they've seen so far

as civilian casualties.

it's unclear to me whether Pakistan

would strike back at military targets

or if they would strike back beyond that.

if they strike back at military targets,

there's a potential

the escalation doesn't,

doesn't get out of hand.

But this is

the tensions have been hugely high

that that Pakistani

security officials

believe this is an existential moment.

The fact that the water to the country

that that that powers

a lot of the electricity generation

here is absolutely vital,

is vital for agriculture.

They feel

that is an existential issue

and therefore their response

was going to be accordingly strong

from that perspective.

it's it's very unclear to me

where it will go from here,

but the language, has been very,

very clear if you track it.

And I've been coming here for about

well over twenty five years.

I first came here

when Pakistan and India were fighting

another one of their major skirmishes,

which killed thousands of troops

high in the Himalayan mountains

inside of Kashmir.

The,

the the Kargil battle

that lasted several months.

The language has become much harder

and tougher in Pakistan

from the military since then.

This is an army, remember,

that has been fighting an insurgency

on their western border

that has actually become

increasingly ferocious

as the security situation

in Afghanistan

is deteriorated

and Islamist

militants have used Afghanistan as a base

and attacked into Pakistan with ferocity

that the army here over the past

couple of decades has become

tougher and stronger

militarily in their ethos,

in their outlook,

and one can even say in that leadership.

So there is a very strong

and toughened

military from the Pakistan's perspective,

but also from that

the way the leadership,

evaluates

the battlespace

and relation with neighbors.

It's quite and military terms.

It's a tough leadership right now.

And, Nick, drawing on your experience

of previous high points in tensions,

just personally,

I remember being in India and Pakistan

some twenty years ago in the two-thousands

when there was concern,

that there might be an escalation

even to a nuclear exchange.

granted, just concern.

And of course, that didn't come to be

but place this current standoff

in recent historical context in terms

of how severe the tensions are today.

To give

it a sort of

I'll try to give it a simple context here,

you have a tougher

and, if you will, more forward

leaning military.

You have a military that,

in the estimation

of most Pakistani civilians,

has a big influence

in the running of the country.

So there's that perspective.

it's a tougher,

more forward leaning,

more robust outlook.

And national security decisions

would reflect that,

that this, that this tension

has been growing,

as you say, is unresolved for seventy five years

since the dispute over

Kashmir left

unresolved in nineteen forty seven after the, British,

empire shot,

you know, basically divided

into two countries, Pakistan and India.

Pakistan, of course, Muslim

majority India, Hindu majority

they fought three major wars,

in in the intervening period,

seventy one was one of the biggest,

and various skirmishes

as recently as two thousand nineteen

and more subsequently.

But in the, in the, in the outlook of, of

of where the situation is,

it is

the fact that India has decided

to shut off water from these three

major rivers

that feed Pakistan's agriculture.

Therefore, economy, therefore,

to to more than two hundred million population

and power generation,

which is vital,

particularly in the summer

when it gets extremely hot,

it's needed for air conditioning

running industry.

So these these are existential issues

for Pakistan at the moment.

And that's I think,

that will underpin the thinking

and has been expressed to me

by very senior security officials here

that the water issue is key.

And I think just to give a little bit

of additional background on the water,

this is something

that was being litigated

in courts in recent months.

And the Pakistani perception is

that India had been looking

for a legal way

to abrogate the terms

of that Indus water

Treaty, signed in nineteen sixty,

had been looking for a legal way

to do that in recent months,

and had taken this particular

killing of twenty six civilians as a rationale

and reason to immediately

jump to that position.

So this is something that Pakistan

has seen coming,

and therefore they believe that this is

this is not just a sudden decision

by India.

It's something that pushing

for brewing for some time.

Nic Robertson, thanks so much.