Pakistan claims downing 12 Indian drones over major cities

New Delhi: Pakistan on Thursday claimed its air defense system shot down a dozen Indian drones overnight, alleging one of the unmanned aerial vehicles attacked a military target near Lahore, causing injuries to soldiers and partial damage to the facility. 

The development comes a day after India launched precision strikes on at least nine locations in Pakistan.

The Pakistani claims are also being seen as an official admission of Indian drones attacking 12 major Pakistani cities, including Lahore and Karachi.

While Pakistani officials said 31 civilians, including women and children, were killed in the Indian strikes on terror sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir under 'Operation Sindoor', India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday told an all-party meeting that at least 100 terrorists were killed.

Singh told the political leadership across parties that the Operation Sindoor is not over.

The strikes, which targeted suspected terrorist infrastructure, were conducted in response to the April 22 massacre in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, where Pakistan-backed terrorists killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, triggering a fresh wave of cross-border hostilities.

Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif, spokesperson for the Pakistan Army, said that an Indian drone wounded four soldiers near Lahore and that the country's air defense system intercepted and downed 12 Indian drones that allegedly entered Pakistani airspace overnight. However, he provided no further details on the locations of these incursions or the nature of the targets involved.

Sharif also claimed that in Sindh province, debris from one of the downed drones fell in a populated area, killing one civilian and wounding another. He did not provide evidence to support these claims, and the incidents could not be independently verified.

In Lahore, local police official Mohammad Rizwan said a drone was downed near Walton Airport, a residential airfield about 25 kilometers from the India-Pakistan border that also houses military installations. Local media reported two additional drones being shot down in other parts of Punjab province, though these reports remain unconfirmed.

In Punjab’s Chakwal district, a drone reportedly crashed into farmland, but no casualties were reported. District police chief Ghulam Mohiuddin said authorities had secured the wreckage and were investigating its origin, though he did not confirm whether the drone belonged to India.

The escalation in drone activity comes as both nations remain on high alert. India’s airstrikes on Wednesday targeted at least nine sites in Pakistan, including locations in Punjab, which reportedly bore the brunt of the casualties. The strikes are believed to have targeted Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) infrastructure, as both groups have been implicated in past terror attacks against India.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a late-night address, vowed to avenge the deaths, raising concerns of a broader conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. However, he did not provide specifics on potential retaliatory actions, further heightening regional tensions.

The situation remains fluid, with both sides ramping up military posturing as the specter of a larger confrontation looms over South Asia.