US President Donald Trump said he hoped clashes between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan end "very quickly", after New Delhi`s forces launched strikes and Islamabad vowed retaliation.

"It`s a shame, we just heard about it", Trump said, after the Indian government said it had hit "terrorist camps" on its western neighbor`s territory following a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir. - "I guess people knew something was going to happen based on the past. They`ve been fighting for many, many decades and centuries, actually, if you really think about it".

India launched military strikes on targets in Pakistan, both countries said, with Pakistan claiming it had shot down 5 Indian Air Force jets in response, in a dangerous escalation between the nuclear-armed rivals, writes CNN.

India`s missile strikes early Wednesday morning targeted "terrorist infrastructure" across nine sites deep in Pakistan`s densely populated Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, it said. They come more than two weeks after a massacre of tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on its neighbor. Pakistan said 8 people were killed in Wednesday`s strikes – including women and a 3-year-old girl – and 35 wounded after 6 locations were targeted, in what the country`s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described as "an act of war".