Tension has been building up for years in Indian administered Kashmir, but the recent killing of 40 Indian paramilitary police by Kashmiri separatists has precipitated a direct conflict between both nations. An attack by the Indian Air force on a claimed operational base for the insurgents inside Pakistan, has now had a retaliation by the Pakistan air force, in which two Indian aircraft have been downed and at least one crewman held captive.
Details of this last encounter remain sketchy, but it seems that Pakistan may have tried to hit a target but been intercepted by the Indian air force who took the fight across the border back into Pakistan.
Is a wider conflict between these two countries inevitable or will both back step back from the brink, before it becomes a full on armed conflict?
India Pakistan: Kashmir fighting sees Indian aircraft downed
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47383634
Pakistan says it has shot down two Indian military jets and captured a pilot in a major escalation between the nuclear powers over Kashmir.
India said it lost one MiG21 fighter and a pilot was missing in action. Pakistani PM Imran Khan said the two sides could not afford a miscalculation with the weapons they had. India and Pakistan - both nuclear-armed states - claim all of Kashmir, but control only parts of it.
They have fought three wars since independence from Britain and partition in 1947. All but one were over Kashmir.
The aerial attacks across the Line of Control (LoC) dividing Indian and Pakistani territory are the first since a war in 1971. They follow a militant attack in Kashmir which killed 40 Indian troops - the deadliest to take place during a three-decade insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir. A Pakistan-based group said it carried out the attack.