The past 36 hours on the India-Pakistan front have been tumultuous. Where the confrontation is headed is unclear.

Although things seemed to be calming down early on Friday, May 9, intense developments followed. A series of attacks occurred on Friday and Saturday, though their sequence is difficult to disentangle. Then Donald Trump on Saturday announced a ceasefire that took effect at 5pm Indian time on that day.

Before it did, escalating attacks by both sides had targeted civilian and military sites. Pakistani aircraft and drone attacks had spread from Kashmir as far south as Gujarat. Most attacks have been closer to the border, by artillery and short-range drones. The most intense seem to have come in the Kashmir region in Jammu, though Indian officials named around 26 locations that had been targeted.

The ceasefire has reportedly been violated. As of this writing on Sunday morning, both sides appear to be re-establishing it. Whether this will lead to further talks on any substantive issue is unclear. Though the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested this might happen, India has ruled out more substantive talks, at least for the time being.

Casualties do not appear to have been heavy. A senior official of the Jammu and Kashmir state was killed in his home in Jammu, but there is no reason to think he was specifically targeted.

There is some confusion about a series of attacks on Amritsar, a city in the Indian Punjab that is the centre of the Sikh religion. A very late-night Pakistani military briefing on Thursday suggested that several ballistic missile attacks had hit Amritsar, but no more has been heard of this.

The most serious Pakistani attack was by a Fateh-1 missile that seems either to have targeted an Indian air force base in Sirsa, near Delhi, or to have targeted Delhi and, as social media posts suggest, been intercepted at Sirsa. If it was fired at Sirsa, the reason for attacking just one Indian air base is unclear.

Though the sequence remains uncertain, India also launched a series of attacks on Pakistani air bases, including Rafiqui, Murid, Chaklala and Rahim Yar Khan. Most notably, another was Nur Khan air base, outside Islamabad. Hitting it may have been intended not to achieve an operational effect but to send a signal to the Pakistani high command. Combat aircraft are not thought to have been at this base. It is used mainly for transportation, including for government officials.

Two other air bases that India targeted are thought to be those of Pakistan’s China-built fighters. Since the fighting began, Pakistan has said it has shot down five Indian aircraft, including three Dassault Rafale fighters from France. US officials have told Reuters that a China-built Chengdu J-10 fighter shot down at least two Indian aircraft on the night of May 7, of which at least one was a Rafale. India has acknowledged no aircraft losses.

Much later on Friday, there were reports that India had attacked Pakistan’s Sargodha air base complex. Pakistan is thought to store nuclear weapons at Sargodha.

Because we don’t know which attacks followed which, we cannot say which, if any, was a retaliation for another. Second, we do not know how exactly they were carried out. Some presumably used missiles or drones, because there is no indication that combat aircraft on either side have crossed the border to make attacks. Even air-to-air firing could conceivably have occurred from one side of the border to the other.

Third, there is considerable confusion about some attacks, particularly on the Sirsa and Nur Khan air bases.

As well as pilots apparently keeping on their own sides of the border, there is no indication of involvement by ground forces except for firing across the border and the Line of Control in Kashmir. No involvement by naval forces is evident.

But the intensity of attacks in the day before the ceasefire was far greater than anybody had expected, especially as the situation seemed to have been winding down on Thursday.

Fighting was sufficiently serious to prompt a global reaction. The G7 countries put out a joint statement calling for de-escalation, and few hours later, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the chief of staff of the Pakistan Army, General Asim Munir, and Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Before Rubio acted, the US had indicated that it would not intervene, with Vice President JD Vance saying that the India-Pakistan confrontation was ‘fundamentally none of our business.’

There are also reports that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan has talked to the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers. China has also urged restraint on both sides.

Where the situation will move from here is unclear—especially whether the ceasefire will hold. Not just two countries are involved; there are also non-state terror groups on Pakistan’s side of the border.

But neither India nor Pakistan wants to antagonise Trump. That will encourage them to move cautiously.