By Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam and Ariba Shahid
ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pakistan said it launched a military operation against India early on Saturday, targeting multiple bases including a missile storage site in northern India as the neighbours extended their worst fighting in nearly three decades.
Pakistan's offensive came shortly after it said India had fired missiles at three air bases earlier on Saturday, including one close to the capital, Islamabad, but Pakistani air defences intercepted most of them.
Locked in a longstanding dispute over Kashmir, the two countries have engaged in daily clashes since Wednesday when India launched strikes inside Pakistan on what it called militant bases. Pakistan vowed to retaliate.
"BrahMos storage site has been taken out in the general area Beas," Pakistan's military said in a message to journalists, adding that the Pathankot Airfield in India's western Punjab state and Udhampur Air Force Station in Indian Kashmir were also hit.
India's defence and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. India's military was expected to brief the media shortly, the ministry of defence said.
Pakistan's information minister said in a post on the social media site X that the military operation was named "Operation Bunyanun Marsoos". The term is taken from the Koran, which means a firm, united structure.
Sounds of explosions were reported in India's Srinagar and Jammu, where sirens were sounded, a Reuters witness said.
"India through its planes, launched air-to-surface missiles ... Nur Khan base, Mureed base and Shorkot base were made targets," Pakistan military spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said in a late-night televised statement.
One of the air bases is in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, just outside the capital Islamabad, and the other two are in Pakistan's eastern province of Punjab, which borders India.
The Pakistani military spokesman said only a few missiles made it past air defences, and those did not hit any "air assets", according to initial damage assessments.
India has said its strikes on Wednesday, which kicked off the clashes between the countries, were in retaliation for a deadly attack on Hindu tourists in Indian Kashmir last month.
Pakistan denied India's accusations that it was involved in the tourist attack. Since Wednesday, the two countries have exchanged cross-border fire and shelling, and sent drones and missiles into each other's airspace.
Much of the fighting on Friday was in Indian Kashmir and neighbouring Indian states. India said it shot down Pakistani drones.
Sounds of explosions were also heard in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore and the northwestern city of Peshawar, as the fighting threatened to spread.
At least 48 people have been killed since Wednesday, according to casualty estimates on both sides of the border that have not been independently verified.
(Reporting by Gibran Peshimam in Islamabad, Ariba Shahid in Karachi, Asif Shahzad in Muzaffarabad, Shivam Patel in New Delhi, Aftab Ahmed in Jammu and Fayaz Bukhari in Srinagar; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Jacqueline Wong)
