India announced on Wednesday that it struck nine terror-linked sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-Administered Kashmir.

The pre-dawn attacks lasted from 1:05 AM to 1:30 AM Indian time on Wednesday and were carried out jointly by the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force under the codename Operation Sindoor, officials said.

Sindoor, a powdered red pigment, is applied in India by married women along the parting of their hair, as a symbol of their marital status. 

Vikram Misri, India’s foreign secretary, who in a symbolic gesture was joined in a press conference by two female officers Colonel Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh, said that the strikes were “focused, measured and non-escalatory”, and “exercised India’s right to respond, pre-empt”.

This operation was a response to the recent terrorist attack on Indian tourists at Pahalgam in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, which killed 26 people.

Misri called it a “savage attack” carried out by Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba. “The attack was clearly driven by the objective of undermining the normalcy returning to Jammu and Kashmir,” he said. “The calculation, presumably, was that harming growth and development in the Indian Union Territory would help keep it backward and create fertile ground for continued cross-border terrorism from Pakistan.” 

Investigations into the April terror attack have revealed communication nodes of terrorists in and to Pakistan, according to Misri. India has identified the planners and backers of the attack, which was claimed by “The Resistance Front”, a cut-out for the UN-proscribed Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, he said.

No military installation was targeted in Pakistan during the operation, Colonel Qureshi stated. Misri expressed concern over Pakistan's inaction against terrorist infrastructure on its territory, citing a lack of demonstrable steps taken despite a fortnight passing since the attacks. 

A key target was the Markaz Taiba mosque complex in Muridke, near Lahore in Pakistan's Punjab province, which is considered the ideological and operational center of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group, Qureshi said. 

Vyomika Singh added that “niche technology” of weapons with careful selection of warheads was used and the targets were specific buildings or a group of buildings.

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