On the night of May 7, the sky over parts of Pakistan was pierced not by the usual light of the moon but by flashes that left mosques half-open to the stars and homes turned to rubble. In Bahawalpur, a historic mosque that people went to for shelter and prayer was hit. In Muridke, a sprawling complex that had once looked after children and patients lay smashed. Across the line of that thin, bleeding map, Muzaffarabad, Kotli, and towns in Punjab, including strikes and drone incidents reported around Okara, villages and cantonment edges were ringed with smoke and question marks. Journalists on the ground counted the damage as India said it had targeted “terror infrastructure”; residents said they had lost fathers, mothers, and children.
When drones strike Pakistani towns, and when international bodies stay in prose instead of action, the Pakistani nation reminds the world: we are not just targets, we are a people who protect, who survive, and who demand accountability.
India claims it targets militants. But in towns like Bahawalpur, where markets should bustle, not burn and in Muridke, those “militants” were not found. Instead, the dead included children, artisans, and shopkeepers. Fifty-one souls were lost, thirty-something civilians, victims of misfired logic or deliberate cruelty. Pakistani doctors counted them amid sirens; grieving mothers named them amid turned-up earth.
These are not mistakes of war; they are civilian homes, sacred spaces, and the faces of children. Under international humanitarian law, that is not “collateral damage.” That is a war crime. Targeting civilians violates the Geneva Conventions, the most basic laws that are supposed to keep humanity alive in the middle of war. And yet, India’s leaders boast. Their television anchors cheer. The architects of these killings wrap themselves in the flag while their hands drip with the blood of children.
Meanwhile, the international system recited its well-worn script. The UN called for “restraint.” The ICJ said nothing because it only moves when states formally bring cases, and jurisdiction is a maze. Amnesty International and human rights groups have long documented civilian harm from drone strikes in Pakistan, but their statements come as reports, not as the kind of immediate, forceful denunciation such an atrocity demands. They speak of “dialogue” and “investigations,” as if our mothers’ tears, our soldiers’ wounds, our schools’ shattered walls are abstract footnotes in policy journals. This silence is not neutrality. It is complicity dressed in procedure. And Pakistan will not let it stand.
So, Pakistan’s armed forces moved swiftly, not with indiscriminate fire, but with rescue operations, evacuations, and border defence. Soldiers carried the injured through rubble, shielded families from sniper risk, and secured hospitals for mass casualties. This wasn’t grandstanding; it was duty. And it was done while absorbing their own losses.
This is our truth and our fight. It isn’t only about legal recourse, it’s about dignity. When drones strike Pakistani towns, and when international bodies stay in prose instead of action, the Pakistani nation reminds the world: we are not just targets, we are a people who protect, who survive, and who demand accountability.
We are not asking for pity. We are demanding acknowledgement. Pakistan is documenting the names, the injuries, the fragments of buildings, the grief of families. This was not just a military operation; it was an assault on our collective dignity. A war crime committed in darkness, while the world exhorted calm. But silence is complicity. So, we rise to tell these stories for the mosques that fell silent, the children whose names should never be forgotten. And the sovereignty violated will not be restored by condolences; it will be defended by truth, record, and accountability.
The writer is a freelance columnist.