Indiasaid on Thursday it had launched surgical strikes on "terrorists" inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir for the first time, marking a major escalation between the two nuclear-armed rivals.

Officials said Indian ground troops had crossed a few hundreds metres inside Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to destroy six to eight terrorist “launch pads” - structures close to the border used by militants preparing to infiltrate into India.

The strikes before dawn on Thursday were in direct response to a spate of recent cross-border attacks on Indian-controlled Kashmir, which New Delhi has blamed on Pakistan amid rapidly worsening relations between the countries.

The most recent such incident, on India’s Uri army base on September 18, left 18 soldiers dead, and was the deadliest attack on Indian security forces in over a decade.