India hit back at Pakistan on Friday night after repelling Pakistani drone strikes at 26 locations in Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat, as Islamabad ratcheted up hostilities for the second straight day, raising fears of a full-blown conflict.

Three civilians were injured in an armed drone strike in Punjab’s Ferozepur town.

Drones were sighted across a wide arc of locations – ranging from Baramulla and Srinagar in the north to Bhuj in the west – along both the international border and the Line of Control, the army said.

“The Indian armed forces are maintaining a high state of alert, and all such aerial threats are being tracked and engaged using counter-drone systems. The situation is under close and constant watch, and prompt action is being taken wherever necessary,” the army said.

The strikes came a day after Pakistan targeted 36 locations inside India with 300 to 400 Turkish-origin armed drones and used civilian airliners as a shield to attack military sites, prompting New Delhi to strike Islamabad’s air defence systems at four places and destroying one of them.

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On Friday night, Indian forces launched an appropriate and proportionate counter-strike, HT learnt. A number of civilian flights were operating in airports such as Lahore and Islamabad at the time of the drone strikes, lending credence to India’s claim earlier in the day that Pakistan was using civilian flights as a shield to attack its neighbouring country.

“An armed drone targeted a civilian area in Ferozpur, resulting in severe injuries to members of a local family. The injured have been provided medical assistance and the area has been sanitised by security forces,” said the army officials.

The drones included suspected armed drones posing potential threats to civilian and military targets, said the officials. HT also learnt that some drones were surveillance vehicles.

“Citizens, especially in border areas, are advised to remain indoors, limit unnecessary movement, and strictly follow safety instructions issued by local authorities. While there is no need for panic, heightened vigilance and precaution are essential,” the army said.

The shower of drone strikes on military sites seen on Friday night represented the third wave of attacks by Pakistan since India’s Operation Sindoor struck nine terror targets in Pakistan and Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in the early hours of Wednesday.

On Wednesday night, India had thwarted Pakistani attacks on 15 places and on Thursday night, repelled attacks at 36 locations. On all three occasions, New Delhi launched a swift counter-attack, inflicting damage on Pakistani air defence systems.

The escalations represent the worst face-off between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in decades and ratcheted up fears of a full-blown conflict.

Air raid sirens wailed and blackouts imposed across a wide swathe of cities and hamlets – from Srinagar to Jodhpur and Bilaspur to Ambala, just 200km away from the national capital. Visuals showed a shower of golden streaks across the night sky and bright flashes where defence systems engaged with incoming projectiles as loud bangs pierced the silence.

“We heard blasts around our locality…everyone is in panic,” said Farooq Ahmad, a resident of Baramulla. At some small villages near the border in Rajasthan, authorities evacuated residents.

Earlier in the day, India had said the Thursday night attacks from Pakistan – between 830pm on Thursday and 4.30am on Friday – cut a wide swathe on the India-Pakistan frontier, from Leh, Jammu and Bathinda in the country’s north to Sir Creek in Kutch in the west. Islamabad also opened heavy artillery fire and launched drone strikes on multiple forward Indian posts along the Line of Control (LoC), killing and injuring some soldiers, the government added.

“The possible purpose of such large-scale aerial intrusions was to hit military infrastructure, test India’s air defences and gather intelligence on deployments. Forensic investigation of the wreckage of the drones is being done. Initial reports suggest that they are Turkish Asisguard Songar drones,” said Colonel Sofiya Qureshi.

The Indian counterattack on Thursday night targeted Pakistan’s air defences, HT learnt. “The Indian armed forces shot down many of these drones using kinetic and non-kinetic means,” Qureshi added. These refer to “hard kill” and “soft kill” options using air defence weapons to destroy them or disabling them by disrupting their communication and navigation systems.

Friday marked the third round of briefing on the operation by Colonel Qureshi, Wing Commander Vyomika Singh and foreign secretary Vikram Misri since Wednesday.

The Thursday night strikes included one on the Bathinda military station, said Qureshi. India struck back by launching an armed drone strike package. “The Pakistani drone was detected and neutralised. In response to the Pakistani attack, armed drones were launched against four air defence sites in Pakistan. One of the drones destroyed an AD radar,” she said.

The Pakistan Army suffered major losses in the Indian counter-fire along the LoC, she added.

Qureshi also said Pakistan’s irresponsible behavior came to the fore as it did not shut its airspace despite launching a failed unprovoked drone and missile attack on May 7 at 8.30 pm.

“Pakistan is using civil airliners as a shield, knowing fully well that its attack on India would elicit a swift air defence response. This is not safe for the unsuspecting civil airliners, including the international flights, which were flying near the IB,” Qureshi said, adding that in contrast India had closed its airspace in the region in light of the high air defence alert.

“However, there are civil airlines flying the air route between Karachi and Lahore. Amongst the other civil aircraft…is an Airbus 320 of Flynas aviation that originated from Dammam at 5.50 pm and landed at Lahore at 9.10 pm. The IAF demonstrated considerable restraint in its response, thus ensuring safety of international civil carriers.”

On the afternoon of April 22, a group of heavily armed terrorists emerged from the woods and targeted tourists on the Baisaran grassland near Pahalgam in Kashmir, killing 26 people, 25 of them tourists and 24 of them Hindu, in a killing reminiscent of the heyday of terrorism in the 1990s and 2000s and the worst to rock the country since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba’s proxy, The Resistance Front (TRF), initially claimed responsibility for the attack that coincided with US vice president JD Vance’s visit to India. New Delhi has since identified three Pakistani terrorists and tracked their digital footprints to underline Islamabad’s role in the attack.

In response, India launched Operation Sindoor between 1.04 am and 1.30 am on Wednesday. Indian forces used a mix of missiles and smart munitions fired by aircraft and ground forces to target bases of UN-proscribed terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) located across the IB and LoC.

The weapons deployed in Operation Sindoor included Scalp deep-strike cruise missiles that allow Rafale fighter pilots to attack ground targets from standoff ranges, the Hammer smart weapon system, guided bomb kits and M777 howitzers firing Excalibur munition. Loitering munitions were also used to strike the targets.

Then on Wednesday night, Pakistan targeted 15 cities included Avantipora, Srinagar, Jammu, Pathankot, Amritsar, Kapurthala, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Adampur, Bathinda, Chandigarh, Nal, Phalodi, Uttarlai, and Bhuj. Fighter jets, military transport aircraft, and many military facilities and headquarters are based in the cities that the Pakistan military sought to target, in a brazen attempt to escalate tensions.

The Indian forces used Akash surface-to-air missiles, a variety of anti-drone systems and other counter-measures to defeat the incoming threats that were swiftly engaged after being detected and tracked by an integrated network of radars and command and control systems.

Kamikaze drones, including the Harop bought from Israel, were also deployed to target air defence networks in Pakistan.