India and Pakistan both said they shot down each other's fighter jets on Wednesday, a day after Indian warplanes struck inside Pakistan for the first time since a 1971 war, prompting world powers to urge restraint. Both countries have ordered air strikes over the last two days, the first time in history that two nuclear-armed powers have done so, while ground forces have exchanged fire in more than a dozen locations. Tension has been elevated since a suicide car bombing by Pakistan-based militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary police on Feb. 14, but the risk of conflict rose dramatically on Tuesday when India launched an air strike on what it said was a militant training base. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan called for talks with India and hoped "better sense" would prevail so that both sides could de-escalate. "History tells us that wars are full of miscalculation. My question is that, given the weapons we have, can we afford miscalculation," Khan said during a brief televised broadcast to the nation. "We should sit down and talk." India's attack on Tuesday targeted the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the group that claimed credit for the suicide attack. India said a large number of JeM fighters had been killed, but Pakistani officials said the strike was a failure and inflicted no casualties. Pakistan and India have fought three wars since independence from British colonial rule in 1947, two over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, and went to the brink a fourth in 2002 after a Pakistani militant attack on India's parliament. The latest escalation marks a sudden turnaround in relations between the two countries, that both claim Kashmir in full but rule in part. As recently as November, Pakistan's Khan spoke of "mending ties" with India. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke separately with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan and urged them to avoid "further military activity" following Tuesday's air strike. "I expressed to both ministers that we encourage India and Pakistan to exercise restraint, and avoid escalation at any cost," Pompeo said in a statement on Wednesday. "I also encouraged both ministers to prioritize direct communication and avoid further military activity," he said. Both China and the European Union have also called for restraint. Many of the facts in the latest series of engagements are disputed by the two sides. One of the jets crashed on the Indian-controlled side of the de facto border in Kashmir, known as the Line of Control, and the other on the Pakistani side and two Indian pilots had been captured, he said. Ghafoor said the Pakistani aircraft had carried out the strikes in response to India's air strike the day before but had taken deliberate action to ensure no casualties were caused. The Pakistani jets had locked on to six targets, in a demonstration of their capacity to hit strategic installations, but deliberately fired into open spaces where there would be no casualties. Raveesh Kumar, a spokesman for India's foreign ministry, gave a different account, telling a news briefing that the Pakistan air strikes on military targets had been "foiled". India shot down one Pakistani plane that landed in Pakistani territory, and that it had lost one of its own planes, not two, with the pilot "missing in action", Kumar added. "Pakistan has claimed that he is in their custody. We are ascertaining the facts," Kumar said. Pakistan denies it lost a plane in the encounter. — Reuters
