What India's Operation Sindoor Signifies

India and Pakistan have so far managed "to avoid a descent into full-blown conflict," but the nuclear-armed countries who both lay claim to the region of Kashmir were tip-toeing around it Wednesday, per the Wall Street Journal, following what Pakistan's president said was "an act of war." The latest:

• Operation Sindoor: India on Wednesday said it had carried out "non-escalatory" retaliatory strikes on nine "terrorist infrastructure" sites, including training camps, in Pakistan and the Pakistan-controlled area of Kashmir. The country said it chose to act based on intelligence that additional attacks, like the one that killed 26 people in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir last month, were on the horizon.
• Killing the killers? India claims Pakistan was behind the April 22 attack, which Islamabad denies. "We killed only those who killed our innocents," said India's defense minister, Rajnath Singh, per the Guardian. "We have shown sensitivity by ensuring that no civilian population was affected in the slightest," he added, per Reuters.

• Pakistan counters: The country's National Security Committee described the terrorist camps as "imaginary," while claiming deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, including mosques, per the Guardian. Reuters notes a mosque-seminary in the heart of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, was "badly damaged."
• 'Act of war': The office of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said it was an unprovoked and unlawful "act of war" and that Pakistan's army had been authorized to undertake "corresponding actions," per the Guardian. The message from India was that "if Pakistan responds, India will respond," the outlet notes. But "we are prepared for an all-out war," Pakistan's defense minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, tells CNN.

• Deaths: Pakistan says 26 civilians were killed and 46 wounded in the strikes. Islamist militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed said 10 relatives and four associates of its leader, Masood Azhar, were killed, per the Guardian. India claims 15 of its civilians, including children, were killed in cross-border shelling overnight, per the Journal.
• Trump comments: The escalation came after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for the two sides to ease tensions in phone calls with Sharif and India's foreign minister last week, per the Journal. It's "a shame," President Trump said Wednesday of the fighting, adding he hoped it would end "very very quickly."
• The significance of the name: The New York Times explains that sindoor, or vermilion powder, is used to designate the marital status of Hindu women: "Married women wear it either in the parting of their hair or on their foreheads, and they wipe it off if they become widowed." The operation's name is therefore a nod to the women who lost their husbands in the April 22 attack.

(More Kashmir stories.)