INDIANS AND Pakistanis awoke on the morning of February 26th to alarming, if contradictory, news. Indian fighter jets bombed an alleged terrorist training camp in Pakistan overnight, officials in Delhi said, in retaliation for a suicide attack that killed some 40 soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago. They claimed the strike, near the town of Balakot north of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, destroyed a “massive” facility run by Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), a jihadist group that took responsibility for the terror attack on February 14th. Unofficial Indian sources estimated the air-raid may have killed as many as 300 jihadists.

Pakistan, however, denies any casualties or damage, but issued a vague threat that it will respond in its own time. In a social-media post its military spokesman admitted that Indian aircraft had intruded briefly into Pakistani airspace, but said that when challenged they had “released payloads in haste while escaping”. Reuters, reporting from near the site of the raid, quoted villagers as saying they had heard bombs in the night, but no one was seriously hurt.

In a morning press conference Vijay Gokhale, India’s foreign secretary, offered indirect reassurance that India does not seek further escalation. He emphasised that the raid was “non-military” in nature—a way of saying it did not target Pakistan’s formal army—and was designed to avoid civilian casualties. He described the action as pre-emptive, and based on intelligence that JeM was planning further cross-border suicide attacks. He repeated India’s protest that despite repeated requests, backed by evidence, Pakistan had taken no concrete action to dismantle “the infrastructure of terrorism”.

The sharp discrepancy over details of the airstrike is not unprecedented. In 2016, following a JeM attack on an Indian army base in Kashmir that left 19 soldiers dead, India claimed to have mounted a series of cross-border commando raids in response, killing numerous jihadists. Pakistan simply denied that it had detected any military action. The wide gap between the two countries’ versions suggests a tacit understanding that neither of the rival nuclear powers wishes to push things too far. In this game India, where the prime concern of governments is to win elections, will make maximum patriotic show of any incident. Pakistan, however, whose army pretends it does not really sponsor terror groups, when everyone knows it does, and which has a long-term aim of prising Muslim-majority Kashmir from India, will minimise its importance.

This familiar scenario is especially applicable just now. Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, faces a crucial election in April, and badly wants to flex India’s muscle to impress voters. Pakistan’s army, meanwhile, is keen to exploit deepening troubles in Indian-administered Kashmir, where the chronically restless population has grown increasingly angry with Mr Modi’s heavy-handed rule.

But this is not just a game. India’s patience with Pakistani meddling really has worn dangerously thin. Repeatedly over the past three decades, Pakistan-based jihadist groups have struck targets in India, and repeatedly Pakistan has done little more to punish them than give a light slap on the wrist.

Whatever the true scope of the Indian strike, it does represent a significant shift in the fraught relations between the countries, which have fought three big wars, several smaller ones and uncounted skirmishes across a 2,000 mile-long border. The raid marks the first use of air-power between the two countries since their last full-out war, in 1971. It also marks the first time since then that India has struck deep inside Pakistani territory, breaking an unspoken rule that confined previous military engagements—such as tit-for-tat artillery exchanges, or “capture the flag” cross-border raids—to the disputed and divided territory of Kashmir. India or Pakistan “proper” were considered out of bounds.

This means that India has, in effect, thrown a gauntlet down to Pakistan. The message is that it can no longer so easily hide behind its nuclear deterrent, and global fears of escalation, while allowing its proxies to take potshots at a much bigger and richer neighbour.