Headline

Dozens Killed As India, Pakistan Exchange Fire

Published

6 months ago

May 7, 2025

India and Pakistan exchanged heavy artillery fire along their contested frontier on Wednesday after New Delhi launched deadly missile strikes on its arch-rival, in the worst violence between the nuclear-armed neighbours in two decades.

At least 38 deaths were reported, with Islamabad saying 26 civilians were killed by the Indian strikes and firing along the border, and New Delhi adding at least 12 dead from Pakistani shelling.

The fighting came two weeks after New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing an attack on the Indian-run side of disputed Kashmir.

The South Asian neighbours have fought multiple wars since they were carved out of the sub-continent at the end of British rule in 1947.

The latest violence exceeds India’s strikes in 2019, when New Delhi said it had hit “several militants” after a suicide bomber attacked an Indian security force convoy, killing 40.

The Indian army said “justice is served”, reporting nine “terrorist camps” had been destroyed, with New Delhi adding that its actions “have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature”.

Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif accused Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of launching the strikes to “shore up” his domestic popularity, but said Islamabad had struck back.

“The retaliation has already started”, Asif told AFP. “We won’t take long to settle the score.”

Military spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said five Indian jets had been downed across the border.

An Indian senior security source, who asked not to be named, said three of its fighter jets had crashed on home territory.

– ‘Shelling raining down’ –

In Muzaffarabad, the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, troops cordoned off streets around a mosque Islamabad said was struck, with blast marks visible on the walls of several nearby homes.

“There were terrible sounds during the night, there was panic among everyone,” said Muhammad Salman, who lives close to the mosque.

“We are moving to a safer place… we are homeless now,” added 24-year-old Tariq Mir who was hit in the leg by shrapnel.

Pakistan said 21 civilians were killed in the strikes — including four children — while five were killed by gunfire at the border.

India’s army accused Pakistan of “indiscriminate” firing across the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border in Kashmir.

“We woke up as we heard the sound of firing”, Farooq, a man in the Indian town of Poonch, told the Press Trust of India news agency from his hospital bed, his head wrapped in a bandage.

“I saw shelling raining down.”

AFP reporters in the town saw bursts of flame as shells landed.

At least 12 perople were killed and 29 others wounded in Poonch, local official Azhar Majid told AFP.

India had been widely expected to respond militarily to the April 22 attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir by gunmen it said were from Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.

The assault in the tourist hotspot of Pahalgam killed 26 people, mainly Hindu men.

New Delhi has blamed Islamabad for backing the attack, sparking a series of heated threats and diplomatic tit-for-tat measures.

Pakistan rejects the accusations and called for an independent probe and on Wednesday Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called India’s strikes a “heinous act of aggression” that would “not go unpunished”.

The two sides have exchanged nightly gunfire since April 24 along the LoC, according to the Indian army. Pakistan also said it has held two missile tests.

– ‘Maximum restraint’ –
“Escalation between India and Pakistan has already reached a larger scale than during the last major crisis in 2019, with potentially dire consequences”, International Crisis Group analyst Praveen Donthi said.

Diplomats have piled pressure on leaders to step back.

“The world cannot afford a military confrontation between India and Pakistan,” the spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington he hoped that the fighting “ends very quickly”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to top security officials in both New Delhi and Islamabad since the strikes and said he was monitoring the situation “closely”.

Concern poured in, including from China — a mutual neighbour of both nations — as well as from Britain, France and Russia, while airlines have cancelled, diverted or rerouted flights.

Rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.

India regularly blames its neighbour for backing armed groups fighting its forces in Kashmir, a charge that Islamabad denies.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is expected in New Delhi on Wednesday, two days after a visit to Islamabad, as Tehran seeks to mediate.

AFP

Headline

UK Police Arrest Asylum Seeker Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed

Published

10 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

The UK police on Sunday arrested an Ethiopian asylum seeker and convicted sex offender, whose crimes had sparked anti-immigration protests, after he was accidentally released from prison in an embarrassing blunder by British authorities.

London’s Metropolitan Police said officers arrested Hadush Kebatu in the north of the capital on Sunday morning, nearly 48 hours after he was mistakenly freed around 30 miles (48 kilometres) away.

Kebatu, 38, had served the first month of a one-year sentence for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman, but was reportedly due to be deported when the Prison Service error occurred on Friday.

His high-profile case earlier this year in Epping, northeast of London, sparked demonstrations in various English towns and cities where asylum seekers were believed to be housed, as well as counter-protests.

Commander James Conway, who oversaw the manhunt for him, said “information from the public” led officers to the Finsbury Park neighbourhood of London, where he was found.

“He was detained by police but will be returned to the custody of the Prison Service,” he added.

Kebatu is now expected to be deported.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Friday he was “appalled” by the “totally unacceptable” mistake that saw him freed rather than sent to an immigration detention centre.

The Telegraph newspaper said he was wrongly categorised for release on licence and handed a £76 ($101) discharge grant.

Police had appealed Saturday for Kebatu to turn himself in, after reports emerged that he had appeared confused and reluctant to leave the prison in Chelmsford, eastern England.

A delivery driver described seeing Kebatu return several times in a “very confused” state, only to be turned away by staff and directed to the railway station.

The driver told Sky News he saw Kebatu outside the jail, asking, “Where am I going? What am I doing?”

“He was starting to get upset, he was getting stressed,” the driver said.

The father of Kebatu’s anonymous teenage victim told the broadcaster that “the justice system has let us down.”

Police arrested the asylum seeker in July after he repeatedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and touch her legs, and made sexually explicit comments to her.

He also sexually assaulted an adult woman, placing a hand on her thigh, when she intervened to stop his interactions with the girl.

He was staying at the time at Epping’s Bell Hotel, where scores of other asylum seekers have been accommodated, and which became the target of repeated protests.

AFP

Headline

Madagascar Revokes Ousted President’s Nationality

Published

11 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

Madagascar’s new government has stripped ousted president Andry Rajoelina of his Malagasy nationality in a decree published Friday, 10 days after he was removed in a military takeover.

According to AFP, the decree means that Rajoelina, who was impeached on October 14 after fleeing the island nation in the wake of weeks of protests, would not be able to contest future election.

The decree published in the official gazette said Rajoelina’s Malagasy nationality was revoked because he had acquired French nationality in 2014, local media reported, as photographs of the document were shared online.

French broadcaster RFI said it had confirmed the decree with the entourage of the new prime minister, Herintsalama Rajaonarivelo, who signed the order.

The decree cited laws stipulating that a Malagasy who voluntarily acquires a foreign nationality loses their Malagasy nationality.

Rajoelina’s French nationality caused a scandal when it was revealed ahead of the November 2023 elections, nearly 10 years after it was granted.

It triggered calls for him to be disqualified but he went on to win the contested polls, which were boycotted by opposition parties.

The 51-year-old politician fled Madagascar after army Colonel Michael Randrianirina said on October 11 his CAPSAT unit would refuse orders to put down the youth-led protest movement, which security forces had attempted to suppress with violence.

Rajoelina said later he was in hiding for his safety, but did not say where.

Randrianirina was sworn in as president on October 14, pledging elections within two years.

Headline

Kamala Harris Hints At Running For President Again

Published

11 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

Former US vice president Kamala Harris said in a British television interview previewed in Saturday that she may “possibly” run again to be president.

Harris, who replaced Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate but lost to Donald Trump, told the BBC that she had not yet decided whether to make another White House bid.

But the 61-year-old insisted she was “not done” in American politics and that her young grandnieces would see a female president in the Oval Office “in their lifetime, for sure”.

“I have lived my entire career a life of service, and it’s in my bones, and there are many ways to serve.

“I’ve not decided yet what I will do in the future, beyond what I am doing right now,” Harris told the British broadcaster in an interview set to air in full on Sunday.

The comments are the strongest hint yet that Harris could attempt to be the Democratic Party nominee for the 2028 election.

The interview follows the release of her memoir last month, in which she argued it had been “recklessness” to let Biden run for a second term as president.

She also accused his White House team of failing to support her while she was his deputy, and at times of actively hindering her.

AFP