Pakistan has accused India of deploying Israeli Harop drones in a string of strikes on the neighbouring country, fuelling fears of a dangerous military escalation in South Asia.
The Pakistani military claimed on Thursday that India had used loitering munition drones to target multiple places, including major urban centres Karachi and Lahore.
The military said in a statement they shot down 25 Harop drones using electronic countermeasures and physical force. “The debris of Israeli-made Harop drones is being collected from different areas of Pakistan,” they added.
In a televised briefing, military spokesperson Lt General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said drones were “neutralised” in Lahore, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, and near Karachi. One drone, he said, “partially” struck a military target near Lahore, injuring four soldiers and damaging equipment.
“As we speak, the process of India sending across these Harop drones, this naked aggression, continues,” he said. “The armed forces are on a high degree of alert and neutralising them.”
One drone reportedly also crashed in the village of Sarfaraz Leghari in Sindh province, killing a civilian and injuring another. Police confirmed the incident while eyewitnesses described the drone hovering over the area before being intercepted and falling near a canal.
“My brother Mukhtiar Ahmed, who was only 25, was martyred,” Jabbar Laghari, a teacher from the village, said.
The Harop is a loitering munition, or kamikaze drone, developed by the Israel Aerospace Industries. The suicide drone has “nine-hour endurance to seek targets in a designated area, locate and identify them, plan an attack route, then pursue the strike from any direction at a shallow or steep dive”, according to its maker.
It can be launched from sealed canisters aboard land and naval platforms.
The drone carries a 23kg warhead and retains a man-in-the-loop feature, allowing human operators to abort attack or retarget mid-flight, according to the Hindustan Times.
Harop’s combat success was recognised during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, where it was used by Azerbaijan against Armenian forces, The Week reported.
India reportedly bought over 100 Harop drones in 2021 to bolster defences along its borders with Pakistan and China.
India has not officially responded to Pakistan’s allegation of sending drones across. But the defence ministry claimed it had “neutralised” drones and missiles launched from Pakistan to target sites in the north and the west of the country.
The ministry also claimed to have targeted Pakistani air defence systems in a “targeted and measured” retaliation.
“Our response was targeted and measured. It is not our intention to escalate the situation,” foreign minister S Jaishankar said during talks with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi on Thursday.
“However, if there are military attacks on us, there should be no doubt that it will be met with a very, very firm response.”
Amid diplomatic efforts to contain the conflict between the nuclear-armed South Asian nations, Iran has stepped in to mediate. Mr Araghchi, who visited Islamabad before arriving in New Delhi, said Tehran hoped “the parties will exercise restraint to avoid an escalation of tensions in the region”.
On the night of 07-08 May 2025, Pakistan attempted to engage a number of military targets in Northern and Western India using drones and missiles, all of which were effectively neutralised by the Integrated Counter UAS Grid and Air Defence systems. In response, Indian Armed…
— Ministry of Defence, Government of India (@SpokespersonMoD) May 8, 2025
The Indian military launched a series of strikes on what it claimed was “terrorist infrastructure” across Pakistan early on Wednesday. The attack, it said, was retaliation for the 22 April terror attack in Kashmir that left 26 civilians dead, mostly Hindu tourists.
India has blamed the attack on Pakistan, which it has long accused of harbouring and backing separatist militancy in Kashmir, the restive Himalayan region that both countries claim in whole but control only in part.
Pakistan said its military shot down five Indian fighter jets and a combat drone involved in the strikes, a claim dismissed as “misinformation” by the Indian embassy in Beijing.
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