ISLAMABAD, Pakistan >> India said early Wednesday that it had conducted several airstrikes on Pakistan, hailing a victory in the name of vengeance for the terrorist attack last month that killed 26 civilians in Kashmir.

But evidence was also growing that Indian forces may have taken heavy losses during the operation. At least two aircraft were said to have gone down in India and the Indian-controlled side of Kashmir, according to three officials, local news reports and accounts of witnesses who had seen the debris of two.

And Pakistan said Wednesday that it will avenge those killed by India’s missile strikes. Pakistan called the strikes an act of war and claimed it downed several Indian fighter jets.

The missiles killed 31 people, including women and children, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the country’s Punjab province, Pakistan’s military said. The strikes targeted at least nine sites “where terrorist attacks against India have been planned,” India’s Defense Ministry said. Two mosques were hit.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his country would avenge the dead but gave no details, fanning fears of all-out conflict between the nuclear-armed rivals. Already, it’s their worst confrontation since 2019, when they came close to war.Later however, Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif struck a different tone, suggesting that Pakistan had already responded by shooting down Indian planes and drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs.

He said his country would refrain from further action if India took no additional steps to attack and agreed to an independent investigation.

“We could have taken down 10 planes yesterday,” Asif said. “We had the opportunity, but we restricted it to five planes and two UAVs because we didn’t want to expand this situation.”

Asif also said Wednesday that he would welcome further U.S. efforts to help defuse his country’s crisis with India and praised President Donald Trump for calling for a quick end to the conflict.

Wednesday’s attacks

The Indian government said its forces had struck nine sites in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region, in what it described as retaliation for the terrorist attack. Residents of the Indian side of Kashmir said at least 10 people had been killed in shelling from the Pakistani side since India carried out its strikes.

India said Wednesday that it had struck Pakistan after gathering evidence “pointing towards the clear involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists” in last month’s attack on civilians in a tourist area in Kashmir. It said its military actions had been “measured, responsible and designed to be nonescalatory in nature.” It added that it had targeted only “known terror camps.”

In its own statement Wednesday, the Pakistani government called the Indian strikes “an unprovoked and blatant act of war” that had “violated Pakistan’s sovereignty.” Pakistani military officials said they had begun a “measured but forceful” response, and Prime Minister Sharif said the country’s forces had downed five Indian aircraft — a claim that could not be verified.

One Indian official confirmed the crash of three aircraft, but cautioned that the reasons were not clear. Two other Indian security officials confirmed reports that some Indian aircraft had gone down, but would not elaborate on the details. They all spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of military action.

News channels and witnesses said at least one aircraft had gone down on the Indian side of Kashmir. A second aircraft was reported to have been downed in the Indian state of Punjab, according to Indian news reports and a witness account.

Low-level conflicts

The two countries have fought repeated wars, with the disputed area of Kashmir as a prime flashpoint, since Pakistan was cleaved off from India in 1947 at the end of the British colonial rule in the subcontinent.

But in recent years, particularly after both built deterrence through nuclear weapons in the 1990s, their military confrontations had been limited to largely along their border regions. While India in recent years has struck Pakistan-administered Kashmir and areas close to it during periods of rising tensions, the attack Wednesday included strikes on Punjab, in mainland Pakistan, for the first time in more than half a century.

U.S. involvement

At the White House, Trump called the escalation between India and Pakistan “a shame.”

Shortly after the strikes, the Indian national security adviser, Ajit Doval, briefed Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the military actions, according to Indian officials.

Trump’s comments Tuesday that he hopes the conflict “ends very quickly” were helpful, Asif, the defense minister, said. He added that he would welcome further U.S. efforts to bring “down the temperature in the region.”

A spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for restraint from the two sides, adding, “The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan.”

American diplomats have been in contact with Pakistani and Indian officials. And Tulsi Gabbard, the U.S. director of national intelligence, has been in frequent contact with Indian officials to defuse the situation, American officials said.

Attack in Kashmir

In the April 22 attack, attackers opened fire on tourists in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir, killing 26 and injuring more than a dozen others.

The terrorist attack was one of the worst against Indian civilians in decades, and India was quick to suggest that Pakistan, its neighbor and archenemy, had been involved.

The attack was claimed by a militant group calling itself Kashmir Resistance. India has said the group is linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a disbanded Pakistani militant group that New Delhi long accused of being backed by Pakistan.

The Pakistani government has denied involvement, and India has presented little evidence to support its accusations. Still, soon after the onslaught, India announced a flurry of punitive measures against Pakistan, including threatening to disrupt the flow of a major river system that supplies it with water.

In Kashmir, Indian forces began a sweeping crackdown, arresting hundreds, as they continued their hunt for the attackers. And India and Pakistan have repeatedly exchanged small-arms fire along the border in the days after the attack.

This report contains information from the Associated Press.