27 FEB 2019: Tensions escalated sharply on the Asian subcontinent Tuesday with nuclear-armed neighbours Pakistan and India trading accusations and warnings after a pre-dawn airstrike by India that New Delhi said targeted a terrorist training camp. The Canadian Government has issued travel warnings for both India and Pakistan.

Canadians are warned to ‘Avoid all Travel’ to Jammu and Kashmir, and the border areas of India and Pakistan. It also calls for ‘A high degree of caution’ throughout India and ‘all non essential travel’ throughout Pakistan.

Pakistan said there were no casualties, while New Delhi called the attack a pre-emptive strike that hit a terrorist training camp and killed “a very large number” of militants.

The airstrike followed a suicide bombing in India’s section of the disputed territory of Kashmir on Feb. 14 that killed more than 40 Indian soldiers. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack but vowed to respond to any Indian military operation against it.

Several reporters, trudged up the Kangaran Nallah hill to the site of Tuesday’s bombing near the town of Balakot, close to the border with Pakistan’s sector of Kashmir. They saw several large craters, a few upended trees and villagers wondering why they had been targeted.

“There are only mud-brick homes here. There is no madrassas. There isn’t even a concrete house,” said 55-year-old Noor Shah who lived about a half-kilometre (a third of a mile) from the site.

When the bombs struck, Shah said residents of his village of Jabba stayed indoors. It wasn’t until morning when “we saw soldiers and learned from them that Indian planes dropped bombs in our village,” he said.

Pakistan’s military spokesman, Maj. Gen Asif Ghafoor, said Indian planes crossed into the Muzafarabad sector of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. He said Pakistan scrambled its warplanes and the Indian jets released their payload “in haste” near Balakot.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters in New Delhi that Indian fighter jets targeted Jaish-e-Mohammad camps in a pre-emptive strike after intelligence indicated another attack was being planned.

“Acting on intelligence, India early today struck the biggest training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammad in Balakot,” he said. “In this operation, a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and jihadis being trained were eliminated.”

Balakot Police Chief Saghir Hussain Shah said he had sent teams to the area where the Indian bombs reportedly hit, which he described as a mostly deserted wooded area. He said there were no casualties and no damage. There was no immediate explanation for the differing accounts, although India and Pakistan routinely contradict one another.

The Feb. 14 attack was the worst on Indian forces since the start of the 1989 insurgency in Kashmir and came as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a re-election campaign.

Addressing a rally of former soldier’s in the Indian state of Rajasthan hours after the airstrike, Modi said India was in “safe hands.”

“I vow that I will not let the country bow down,” he said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan dismissed India’s account of the airstrike on a terrorist training camp as “self-serving, reckless and fictitious.” Earlier this month, Khan had authorized the army to “respond decisively and comprehensively to any aggression or misadventure” by India, after New Delhi vowed a “jaw-breaking response” to the Kashmir suicide bombing.

Pakistan has vowed to help investigate the suicide bombing and to take action against anyone found to be using Pakistani soil for attacks on India. It also offered to hold a dialogue with India on all issues, including terrorism.

Kashmir, which is split between the two countries but claimed by each in its entirety, has been the cause of two wars between the neighbours. They fought a third war in 1979 over East Pakistan, which gained independence with the help of India and became Bangladesh.

Insurgents in Indian-controlled Kashmir have been demanding either outright independence or union with Pakistan. India routinely accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants who cross the mountainous Himalayan region.

China, a close ally of Pakistan, urged both sides to show restraint.

“We hope that both India and Pakistan can … take actions that will help stabilize the situation in the region and help to improve mutual relations,” said China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang.