Pakistan calls its top nuclear body officials after launching deadly retaliation on multiple indian bases

ISLAMABAD/NEW DELHI – Pakistan said it called a meeting on Saturday of the top body that oversees its nuclear arsenal after it launched a military operation against India early in the morning, targeting multiple bases including a missile storage site in northern India.

The Indian army said after the attacks that Pakistan was continuing its “blatant escalation” with drone strikes and using other munitions along India’s western border, and that its “enemy designs” would be thwarted.

Five civilians were killed in the attacks in the Jammu region of Indian Kashmir, regional police said.

Diplomatic calls for de-escalation, including by the United States, intensified as the nuclear-armed neighbours ramped up their worst fighting in three decades.

Pakistan said that, before its offensive, India had fired missiles at three air bases, including one close to the capital, Islamabad, but Pakistani air defences intercepted most of them.

Pakistan’s military also said the prime minister had called a meeting of the National Command Authority, a top body of civilian and military officials that oversees decisions on its nuclear arsenal.

Analysts and diplomats have long feared that conflict between the arch-rivals could escalate into the use of nuclear weapons, in one of the world’s most dangerous and most populated nuclear flashpoint regions.

Pakistan’s planning minister Ahsan Iqbal said the escalation was a test for the international community.

“We would hate to see that (nuclear) threshold being breached,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir on Friday morning, according to the U.S. State Department.