Headline

Dozens Killed As India, Pakistan Exchange Fire

Published

2 months ago

May 7, 2025

Editor

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

Judge In Maradona Negligence Case Resigns Amid Scandal

Published

10 hours ago

June 24, 2025

Editor

The Argentine judge who caused the collapse of a trial over the 2020 death of football legend Diego Maradona has resigned, her lawyer said Tuesday.

Julieta Makintach’s involvement in a clandestine documentary about the trial of Maradona’s medical team led to the proceedings being scrapped in May after two months of hearings.

No date has yet been set for a new trial.

“I have the honor of addressing you in my capacity as judge (…)in order to submit my resignation from my position,” Makintach wrote in a letter to the governor of Buenos Aires that was shared by her lawyer.

Makintach was facing impeachment proceedings over her participation in the documentary about the case against seven medical staff accused of manslaughter over Maradona’s death.

Maradona — considered one of the world’s greatest ever players — died in November 2020 at the age of 60 while recovering from brain surgery.

He died of heart failure and acute pulmonary edema — a condition where fluid accumulates in the lungs — two weeks after going under the knife.

Prosecutor say the conditions of his home convalescence were grossly negligent.

Makintach was one of three judges hearing the case.

Headline

Netanyahu Vows To Thwart ‘Any Attempt’ By Iran To Rebuild Nuclear Programme

Published

10 hours ago

June 24, 2025

Editor

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday to crush any attempt by Iran to rebuild its nuclear programme in a national address to the country after 12 days of war.

“Iran will not have a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu said after a ceasefire put a halt to airstrikes by the two countries against each other.

“We have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project. And if anyone in Iran tries to rebuild it, we will act with the same determination, with the same intensity, to foil any attempt,” he added.

Headline

Netanyahu Hails ‘Historic Victory’ In Iran War

Published

10 hours ago

June 24, 2025

Editor

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday hailed a “historic victory” in his country’s 12-day war against Iran and vowed to prevent Tehran rebuilding its nuclear facilities.

“We have achieved a historic victory,” Netanyahu said in a televised address to the nation after the start of a ceasefire agreed to by both countries.

“Iran will never have a nuclear weapon,” he told viewers in the near-10-minute speech.

“We have thwarted Iran’s nuclear project. And if anyone in Iran tries to rebuild it, we will act with the same determination, with the same intensity, to foil any attempt,” he added.

The head of Israel’s military Eyal Zamir said earlier on Tuesday that its strikes had set back Iran’s nuclear programme “by years” and the campaign against the country was now “entering a new phase”.

Iran said on Tuesday that it was ready to return to nuclear negotiations with the United States as the ceasefire took hold.

But Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country would continue to “assert its legitimate rights” to the peaceful use of atomic power.

Israel’s government said in a statement earlier Tuesday that it had removed the “dual existential threat” of Iran’s nuclear programme and missiles during its strikes.

Netanyahu claimed that Israel’s attack on Iran, named “Operation Rising Lion”, would be “recorded in the annals of Israel’s wars, and will be studied by armies all over the world.”

It included repeated strikes on Iran’s nuclear and missile sites, assassinations of military and domestic security service leaders, as well as the bombing of state media and Evin prison in Tehran.

After the United States joined in the conflict with strikes on Sunday, President Donald Trump said his forces had “totally obliterated” Iran’s main nuclear sites.

Analysts said, however, that it remained unclear whether the strikes had put the nuclear threat out of reach, with the possibility that Iran had moved its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium away from the targeted sites.

Tehran has always denied seeking a nuclear weapon.