Pakistan shot down Israeli-made drones launched by India into its airspace on Thursday, following a series of Indian strikes across the country on Wednesday.
Pakistan’s military said it had shot down 25 Israeli Harop drones on Thursday, including in Karachi and Lahore.
An Indian government source confirmed that at least one Israeli drone had been downed by Pakistan. Both sides view the military claims made by the other as propaganda.
The Indian source told Middle East Eye the drones were made in Israel and supplied to the Indian military by the Adani Group, a multinational company founded by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, who has been close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for decades.
The Adani group shares a production line with Israeli military company Elbit, from which India provided Israel with Hermes 900 drones after the start of the war in Gaza.
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Over the last decade, India has imported military hardware worth $2.9bn from Israel, including radars, surveillance and combat drones, and missiles.
The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Harop drone launched by India into Pakistan is an unmanned “suicide” or “kamikaze” aircraft, also known as a loitering munition. It is 2.5 metres long and has a three-metre wingspan.
The drone has been used in the Syrian war, by Israel, India and by Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war with Armenia.
‘Rhetoric war’
Pakistan’s military spokesperson, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said that aside from the drones shot down above Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan’s largest cities, one drone had been downed over the garrison city of Rawalpindi, home to the army’s headquarters.
One drone hit a military target near Lahore and four Pakistani army personnel were injured in this attack, Chaudhry said.
“Indian drones continue to be sent into Pakistani airspace… [India] will continue to pay dearly for this naked aggression,” he said.
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This latest round of hostility between the nuclear-armed neighbours comes after India said it had hit “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday, two weeks after it accused Pakistan of involvement in an attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir in which 26 people were killed.
The Indian defence ministry said Pakistan had attempted to engage military targets in northern and western India on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, and that they were “neutralised” by Indian air defence systems.
While fears of an all-out war between Pakistan and India are growing, sources on both sides described the current situation as a “rhetoric war” that would not escalate further.
