...here's a quick recap of what's happened so far:

• Tensions have been running high since India launched a series of air strikes in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir in what it said was retaliation for a deadly militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir
• India claims it successfully targeted nine sites, which it described as "terrorist infrastructure" in a "non-escalatory" manner, and without hitting any Pakistani military facilities
• But Pakistan has rejected India’s claims of terrorist camps on its soil, reiterating that the allegations are baseless. It said that six locations were targeted and claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets. India has not commented on this
• Islamabad has also accused Delhi of hitting civilian targets and said it reserved the right to respond “at a time, place and manner of its choosing”. India, however, says it has "no reports of civilian casualties in Pakistan"
• The strikes, which took place at night, have triggered heavy artillery shelling along the de facto border between the two countries, leading to deaths on both sides
• Delhi says at least 10 people have died and 32 injured in the cross-firing, while Islamabad says 26 people have been killed and 46 injured in Indian air strikes and firing along the border.

• Relations between India and Pakistan have declined sharply following last month's deadly militant attack that killed 26 in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. Indian officials say they have found links between the attackers and Pakistan - a charge Islamabad strongly denied earlier. A manhunt by security forces is still under way
• Since then, both countries have announced a range of retaliatory measures against one another, including closing borders and suspending a river water treaty. Troops from both sides have also traded small arms fire

Tasveer Ahmad, a resident of Tangdar in Indian-administered Kashmir, told the BBC that at least six houses, including his own, were destroyed in the cross-border shelling between India and Pakistan. He said his family survived, but could not save any of their belongings.

“We ran to what we thought was a safe area, but that too came under fire,” Ahmad told the BBC. “We have nothing left - no food, no clothes and no roof over our heads.”

He added that the shelling came without warning. “There was complete calm in the area and then, suddenly, all hell broke loose. No-one saw it coming.”

A video he shared with the BBC showed a house engulfed in flames. We have not been able to independently verify it.

Image source, Getty Images

India's Home Minister Amit Shah has held a meeting with chief ministers, chief secretaries and top police officials of border states.

Chief ministers of Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Sikkim, West Bengal and the lieutenant governors of federally-administered Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir attended the meeting.

The details of the meeting have not been made public, but it came hours after tensions escalated between Delhi and Islamabad following a series of air strikes by India on its neighbouring country.

Image source, Getty Images

France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot has called on Delhi and Islamabad to exercise restraint after India launched air strikes against Pakistan.

Islamabad has called the strikes a "cowardly attack" and has said it will respond to them "at a time and place of its choosing".

“We understand India’s desire to protect itself against the scourge of terrorism, but we obviously call on both India and Pakistan to exercise restraint to avoid escalation and, of course, to protect civilians,” Barrot said in an interview, external to a French news channel.

Russia's foreign ministry has said in a statement that it is "deeply concerned about the deepening military confrontation" between India and Pakistan.

It has urged the countries to show restraint, the RT website reports, external.

“Russia strongly condemns acts of terrorism, opposes any of its manifestations and emphasises the need to unite the efforts of the entire international community to effectively combat this evil,” the statement said.

“It is hoped that the existing disagreements between Delhi and Islamabad can be resolved through peaceful means, with Russia advocating for a bilateral resolution,” it added.

Russia has been India's closest ally for decades, but Moscow has also maintained friendly relations with Islamabad.

Image source, Pakistan Foreign Ministry

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar has briefed Jiang Zaidong, China's ambassador to the country, about India's strikes.

Dar's office said in a statement that the minister briefed the ambassador on the "serious situation following India’s unprovoked violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and the tragic loss of innocent lives".

"[Dar] underscored Pakistan’s firm resolve to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity at all costs. The two sides exchanged views on regional security developments and agreed to maintain close coordination and communication across all relevant areas," it added.

The Chinese foreign ministry had earlier called India's military operation against Pakistan "regrettable".

We are now bringing you more from the statement issued after Pakistan's National Security Committee (NSC) meeting, chaired by PM Shehbaz Sharif.

Pakistan said it had rejected India’s claims of terrorist camps on its soil, reiterating that the allegations were baseless.

"It would also be recalled that immediately after 22 April 2025, Pakistan made a sincere offer for a credible, transparent and neutral investigation, which unfortunately was not accepted," the statement said.

It added that international media visited the alleged "terrorist camps" on 6 May and more visits had been scheduled for today.

However, without providing a shred of evidence about its claims, India had gone ahead and attacked "innocent civilians in order to satiate its... short-sighted political objectives", the statement said.

Citing Article 51 of the UN Charter, Pakistan has asserted its right to self-defence and warned that it reserves the right to respond to India “at a time, place and manner of its choosing” to avenge the loss of civilian lives and the "violation" of its sovereignty.

The country’s armed forces, it said in a statement, have been "fully authorised" to carry out "corresponding actions".

The statement followed a meeting of Pakistan's National Security Committee (NSC), chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

It condemned the strikes, offered condolences to the relatives of those killed in the strikes and pledged to address the "grave developments arising out of India’s unprovoked, cowardly and unlawful act of war".

The statement said Pakistan’s military had “resolutely defended” the country’s territorial integrity against what it called Indian aggression.

Pakistan said in the statement that it had shot down five Indian fighter jets and drones - India has not responded to this claim.

Image source, Getty Images

India's leading airlines have issued travel advisories for civilians being affected due to the closure of several airports in the northern part of the country.

Air India said its flights to and from Jammu and Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir, Leh in the federally-administered territory of Ladakh, Chandigarh, Jodhpur in Rajasthan state, Amritsar in Punjab state and Bhuj, Jamnagar and Rajkot in Gujarat state were being cancelled until the morning of 10 May after aviation authorities announced closure of these airports.

IndiGo also said it had cancelled flights to and from several northern cities due to directives from authorities. Apart from the airports listed by Air India, IndiGo also mentioned Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh state, Bikaner and Kishangarh in Rajasthan and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh state.

SpiceJet also said the situation had impacted its flights to and from these airports.

There's no official statement from India's airports regulator.

Aamir Peerzada
Reporting from Baramulla, Indian-administered Kashmir

The BBC has visited the main hospital in Baramulla district in Indian-administered Kashmir, where four people who were injured in cross-shelling between Indian and Pakistani forces were brought this morning.

Manzoor, 18, was sleeping on the first floor of his home in Uri - a town located near the de facto border between the two countries - when a splinter came through the window and injured his arm.

Doctors say they will need to perform surgery to remove the splinter.

Badardin Naik and two of his family members are also receiving treatment in the same hospital.

All of them were injured when an artillery shell hit their home in Salamabad in the early hours of Wednesday.

Naik and his eight-year-old son sustained head injuries, while his sister-in-law has a clot in her chest. She is in surgery.

"Our house burnt down, but luckily we survived," Naik says.

Image source, Getty Images

In his first public remarks since the Indian strikes on Pakistan, Omar Abdullah, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, has said that no one in the region wants a war between the two nations, but that the onus to "lower guns" lies with Islamabad.

Abdullah says that the Indian government had chosen the "right method" to give a "befitting reply" to those behind the militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.

"Only terror sites in Pakistan were hit, not military area or civilians. But Pakistan has bombed some areas and our civilians were targeted in it," he told ANI news agency in a reference to the shelling at the de facto border between the countries.

The chief minister also assured people in the region that there was no need to panic.

"They [the residents] don't have to run away from here," he says, adding that the region had enough stocks of essentials to sustain them through a crisis.

In Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir, a road, normally busy with tourists and travellers, lies deserted.

All flights in and out of the region's main city have been suspended for civilians and the airport is reserved for military use only.

Many locals have been hiding inside bunkers and some have fled the area to find safer ground. BBC journalist Aamir Peerzada reports.

A prolonged border conflict with India could have terrible consequences for Pakistan’s already shaky economy.

The cash-strapped country is on a $7bn (£5.2bn) International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout programme. The escalations come as gross domestic product (GDP) is just beginning to rise and inflation is falling.

A persistent increase in tensions will set back Pakistan’s “progress in achieving macroeconomic stability”, according to Moody’s ratings agency, and also affect its access to external financing needed to repay the debt it owes to other countries, over the next few years.

Moody’s says impact on India’s economy will be minimal, but higher defence spending could weigh on the government's finances.

Since their partition in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars - most centred on Kashmir.

The first erupted just months after partition, ending in a 1949 UN-brokered ceasefire that split the region but left both nations claiming it in full.

In 1965, they fought again when Pakistani forces crossed into Indian-administered Kashmir, leading to fierce ground and air battles.

In 1971, war flared over East Pakistan, where India supported independence forces, ultimately leading to the creation of Bangladesh.

The 1999 Kargil conflict saw Pakistani troops infiltrate Indian-administered Kashmir; it was the first clash between the nuclear-armed rivals, sparking global alarm.

In more recent years, tensions surged after militant attacks: India launched “surgical strikes” in 2016 after the Uri attack and conducted airstrikes near Balakot in 2019 following the Pulwama bombing.

Pakistan responded with its own air incursions, marking one of the most dangerous escalations since Kargil.

Majid Jahangir
BBC Hindi, Srinagar

Image source, Getty Images

As we reported earlier, we now have confirmation that at least 10 civilians have died and 32 have been wounded in Indian-administered Kashmir, after Pakistan launched heavy artillery shelling along the de facto border between the countries in response to Delhi's air strikes.

The firing was particularly intense in Poonch and Mehandar regions, locals have told the BBC. Several buildings, including houses and shops, have been badly damaged.

"We heard loud explosions for hours on Wednesday night," Zamrood Mughal, a local journalist from Poonch, told the BBC over phone.

“People couldn't sleep the entire night. They abandoned their homes and ran to safer locations," Mughal says.

"Our local hospital is full of injured people."

BBC Urdu

Image source, Getty Images

Maulana Masood Azhar, a UN-designated terrorist based in Pakistan, has announced that 10 members of his family and four close associates have been killed in India's strike on the Subhan Allah Mosque in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

A statement issued on Wednesday by the militant group he heads - Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) - said that the deceased included his elder sister and her husband, his nephew and his wife, a niece, and five children from his family.

JeM carried out a suicide bombing in February 2019 that killed 40 troops in Indian-administered Kashmir, bringing the neighbours to the brink of war.

The group also said that the strike killed three of Azhar's close aides and the mother of one of them.

Mock security drills are being held across several Indian cities and towns on Wednesday. As we reported earlier, India's home ministry had asked officials to conduct these in almost 250 districts with the aim of assessing and enhancing "civil defence mechanisms".

The mock drills aim to test India's readiness for emergency situations such as air raids, blackouts, and evacuations and were announced before the Indian air strikes on Pakistan.

Here are some photos from different cities:

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, EPA

Image source, ANI

Tensions are rising after India launched air strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. If you're just joining us, here's a quick recap:

• India has said it targeted nine different sites that it described as "terrorist infrastructure" in a "focused, measured and non-escalatory" manner, and added that it had not hit any Pakistani military facilities
• Pakistan, which has denied any involvement in last month's militant attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, has said that India hit six sites in what it described as a "cowardly attack"
• The strikes, which took place at night, have triggered heavy artillery shelling along the de facto border between the two countries
• India said 10 people have died and 32 injured in Indian-administered Kashmir
• Pakistan said 26 people have been killed and 46 injured in Indian air strikes and firing along the border. India says it has "no reports of civilian casualties in Pakistan"
• Relations between India and Pakistan - both nuclear-armed states - have declined sharply following last month's deadly militant attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir. Indian officials say they have found links between the attackers and Pakistan - a charge Islamabad strongly denied earlier. A manhunt by security forces is still under way
• Since then, both India and Pakistan have announced a range of retaliatory measures against one another, including closing borders and suspending a river water treaty. Troops from both sides have also traded small arms fire

The story is moving fast. Stay with us as we bring you more updates.

BBC Urdu correspondent Farhat Javed reports from Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir where an Indian air strike damaged a mosque and some houses.

Though many people had left the area last night, some residents have been able to return to assess the damage to their properties, locals told the BBC. A sense of fear and uncertainty remains as people try to make sense of what happened last night.

The toll from cross-border shelling on the Indian side has risen to 10, a top army official has confirmed to the BBC.

All the deaths have been reported from Poonch district, which lies near the Line of Control (LoC) - the de facto border between India and Pakistan.

At least 32 people have been injured in the violence, which began after India launched a series of air strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir earlier today.