India Strikes Pakistan but Is Said to Have Lost Jets

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

But evidence was also growing that the 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.

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 a terrorist attack that killed 26 civilians in Kashmir. Pakistani military officials said that more than 20 people had been killed and dozens injured after six places were hit on the Pakistani side of Kashmir and in Punjab Province. 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.

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 on Wednesday included strikes on Punjab, in mainland Pakistan, for the first time in more than half a century.