Kashmir ‘terror attack’: What happened and how have India and Pakistan reacted?

Published

3 weeks ago

April 26, 2025

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Tensions between India and Pakistan have ramped up following a militant gun attack in the disputed area of Kashmir.

At least 26 people, most of whom were Indian tourists, were shot dead by gunmen at a beauty spot near the resort town of Pahalgam in the Indian-controlled part of the region on 22 April.

India described the massacre as a “terror attack” and said it had “cross border” links, blaming Pakistan for backing it.

Pakistan denied any connection to the atrocity, which was claimed by a previously unknown militant group called the Kashmir Resistance.

It was one of the worst attacks in recent times in Kashmir, which is split between the two countries, and, as Pakistan’s defence minister told Sky’s The World With Yalda Hakim, has the potential to lead to a full-scale conflict involving the nuclear-armed neighbours.

Here is everything you need to know.

What happened during the attack?

At least four gunmen fired at dozens of tourists who were enjoying their holidays in Baisaran meadow, which is three miles (5km) from Pahalgam, and known as ‘mini Switzerland’.

At least 26 people were killed, and three dozen others were injured, according to police officers.

Sky News’ India correspondent Neville Lazarus said on 23 April that security forces had been called to the area and an anti-terror operation was ongoing.

It is believed police and soldiers were continuing to search for the attackers.

Funerals for several of those killed have been held in some Indian cities, and people took part in candle-lit vigils at several places, including in Srinagar, the biggest city in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, in the disputed region.

Locals shut down markets, businesses and schools the day after the attack in protest, amid worries that it would hurt the region’s tourism economy.

What is the Kashmir Resistance?

The Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The group, which emerged in 2019 is considered a splinter group of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a Delhi-based think-tank.

LeT is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US. The same group was accused of killing 166 people during a four-day attack on Mumbai in 2008.

At the time, the group was alleged to have close ties to Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Service Intelligence – an accusation Islamabad denied.

Ajai Sahni, head of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, told Reuters that groups like these have been created by Pakistan particularly as a way to create a “pattern of denial that they were involved in terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir”.

Pakistan has always denied that it supports and funds militants in Kashmir, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support.

How have India and Pakistan reacted?

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to India, “strongly” condemned the attack.

Addressing a rally in the east Indian state of Bihar on 24 April, he said his government will “identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers”.

“We will pursue them to the ends of the earth,” he said, adding: “Terrorism will not go unpunished. Every effort will be made to ensure that justice is done.”

India also announced a number of punitive measures against Pakistan, including revoking visas issued to Pakistan nationals, expelling military advisers, closing a border crossing and suspending a crucial water-sharing treaty known as the Indus Water Treaty.

During a phone call with Mr Modi, the UK’s prime minister Sir Keir Starmer “expressed his deep condolences” to all those affected and agreed to stay in touch with the Indian leader.

India has accused Pakistan of harbouring and arming militant organisations whose members infiltrate the almost 500-mile border in Kashmir and attack the state.

Speaking to Sky News’ Yalda Hakim, Pakistan’s defence minister Khawaja Asif denied his country was behind the Pahalgam attack.

In a meeting of the country’s national security committee, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif passed reciprocal measures on India including cancelling visas, closing its airspace for all Indian-owned or Indian-operated airlines and suspending all trade with India, including to and from any third country.

He also warned that the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty would be considered an act of war.

The treaty, which was brokered by the World Bank in 1960, is essential for supporting agriculture and hydropower for Pakistan’s 240 million people. Suspending it could lead to water shortages at a time when parts of the country are already struggling with drought and declining rainfall.

‘Brief exchange of fire’

Days after the attack, three Indian army officials said that its army had a brief exchange of fire with Pakistani soldiers along the highly militarised border of Kashmir.

The officials claimed Pakistan soldiers used small arms to fire at Indian positions in Kashmir late on 24 April, to which Indian soldiers retaliated. No casualties were reported.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry declined to confirm or deny the report.

Ministry spokesman Shafqat Ali Khan told a news conference: “I will wait for a formal confirmation from the military before I make any comment.”

The exchange of fire followed Pakistan’s defence minister Mr Asif warning that the attack could lead to an “all-out war” between his country and India and that the world should be “worried”.

Mr Asif suggested India had “staged” the shooting in a “false flag” operation. He warned his military was “prepared for any eventuality” amid escalating tensions and diplomatic measures from both sides.

“We will measure our response to whatever is initiated by India. It would be a measured response,” he said.

“If there is an all-out attack or something like that, then obviously there will be an all-out war… If things get wrong, there could be a tragic outcome of this confrontation.”

The United Nations has urged both sides “to exercise maximum restraint and to ensure that the situation and the developments we’ve seen do not deteriorate any further”.

What caused the two country’s tensions?

India and Pakistan have fought several wars and conflicts since their independence from Britain in 1947, primarily due to territorial disputes over Kashmir.

Both countries claim the Himalayan region as their own, but in reality control different sections of the territory.

Armed insurgents in Kashmir have resisted New Delhi for decades, with many Muslim people in the region supporting the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory either under Pakistan’s rule or as an independent country.

The dispute over the land has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people over the past three decades, although outbreaks of sporadic violence did seem to have eased in recent years.

In 2019, a suicide bomber in a vehicle killed 40 paramilitary soldiers in a military convoy, which brought the two countries close to war.

Before that, there was the Mumbai terror attack in 2008 and in 1999, the 10-week-long Kargil War.

The conflict began after Pakistan’s military covertly occupied Indian posts across the line of control (LoC) in the Kargil region.

At least 1,000 combatants were killed on both sides. The fighting stopped after Pakistan asked then US president Bill Clinton to help de-escalate the conflict.

World

Israel and Hamas resume ceasefire talks after ‘extensive strikes’ on Gaza

Published

3 hours ago

May 17, 2025

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Israel and Hamas resume ceasefire talks after 'extensive strikes' on Gaza

Israel and Hamas said ceasefire talks have resumed in Qatar – even as Israeli forces ramped up a bombing campaign and mobilised for a massive new ground assault.

Earlier, the Israeli military said it had been “conducting extensive strikes and mobilising troops” as part of preparations to expand operations in Gaza.

Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said Hamas had “refused to discuss negotiations without a cessation of the war”, but after the airstrikes and the mobilisation of forces the militant group’s representatives “have agreed to sit in a room and seriously discuss the deal”.

“Israel emphasises that if the talks do not progress, the [military] operation will continue,” he added.

A Hamas source told Sky News that ceasefire talks began in Doha on Saturday morning.

Hamas official Taher al-Nono told Reuters news agency that the two sides were involved in discussions without “pre-conditions”.

He added Hamas was “keen to exert all the effort needed” to help mediators make the negotiations a success.

More than 150 people have been killed in Israeli strikes in the last 24 hours, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.

This week has been one of the deadliest phases of bombardment since a truce collapsed in March and marked a significant escalation in Israel’s offensive.

The Israeli military’s preparations to expand operations in Gaza have included the build-up of tanks and troops along the border.

It is part of “Operation Gideon Chariot”, which Israel says is aimed at defeating Hamas and getting its hostages back.

An Israeli defence official said earlier this month that the operation would not be launched before Donald Trump concluded his visit to the Middle East.

The US president ended his trip on Friday, with no apparent progress towards a new peace deal.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, leaders at the annual summit of the Arab League in Baghdad said they were trying to reach a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

They also promised to contribute to the reconstruction of the territory once the war stops.

The meeting comes two months after Israel ended a ceasefire reached with the Hamas militant group.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on 5 May that Israel was planning an expanded, intensive offensive against Hamas as his security cabinet approved plans that could involve seizing Gaza and controlling aid.

This week, Israel said it had bombed the European Hospital because it was home to an underground Hamas base, but Sky News analysis has cast doubt on its evidence.

Israel’s goal is the elimination of Hamas, which attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and seizing about 250 hostages.

Its military response has killed more than 53,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.

World

The chilling moment in Russia-Ukraine peace talks – as Putin makes mockery of Trump’s efforts to end war

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3 hours ago

May 17, 2025

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The chilling moment in Russia-Ukraine peace talks - as Putin makes mockery of Trump's efforts to end war

Vladimir Putin made a mockery this week of Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

Far from punishing him for it, the US president went out of his way to dodge calls to get tough with the Russian leader.

Follow latest updates on Ukraine war

On Sunday, President Trump called on leaders of both Russia and Ukraine to meet.

He posted: “President Putin of Russia wants to meet on Thursday, in Turkey, to negotiate a possible end to the BLOODBATH. Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY.”

That post let the Russian leader off the hook. Only the day before, Putin had been ordered by Ukraine’s allies, including America, to agree to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire.

The Russian president had swerved that demand, suggesting talks instead.

“If the ceasefire is not respected, the US and its partners will impose further sanctions,” Trump posted before swivelling and backing Putin’s proposals for talks instead.

Undeterred, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accepted the call.

Putin though refused to go, sending officials instead.

And yet there was no reprimand from the US president. Instead, he chose to undermine the talks he had himself called for.

“Look, nothing is going to happen until Putin and I get together,” he told reporters on Air Force One. So much for that then.

It is what happened in those talks though that should give the US president the greatest pause for thought about Putin’s intentions – as it does in Kyiv.

The message they brought was blunt and belligerent, threatening eternal war.

“We don’t want war, but we’re ready to fight for a year, two, three – however long it takes,” lead Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky is reported to have said. “We fought Sweden for 21 years. How long are you ready to fight?”

Far from offering a compromise, they are reported to have demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the four regions they have partially seized by force and the capitulation of another two, just for good measure.

And there was a chilling moment when the Russians are reported to have threatened their interlocutors like gangsters.

“Maybe some of those sitting here at this table will lose more of their loved ones,” Mednisky said. Russia is prepared to fight forever.

For Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, that was personal.

Max, his 23-year-old nephew, lost his life fighting the Russians in 2022 not long after their illegal and unprovoked invasion began.

At the end of this week, Putin appears scornful of Western efforts to end this war through a ceasefire and negotiations and Trump seems happy to let him get away with it.

Even Fox News, normally slavishly subservient to Trump, is wondering what gives.

Its anchor Bret Baier is no Jeremy Paxman, but in an interview last night asked Donald Trump 10 times if he might finally now put pressure on Putin.

The US president ducked and dived, talking about the money he had made in his Gulf tour, Zelenskyy’s shortcomings, Biden, and Iran instead. But he did not give a straight answer to the question.

With performances like that, Putin has nothing to worry about. Trump’s position though seems increasingly untenable.

Ukraine’s European allies though should be alarmed. They threatened Russia with sanctions and retaliation last weekend if he rejected a ceasefire. He now has.

With or without America, will they be good to their word?

World

How Israel has escalated Gaza bombing campaign

Published

3 hours ago

May 17, 2025

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How Israel has escalated Gaza bombing campaign

A wave of deadly strikes in northern Gaza has marked a significant escalation in Israel’s offensive.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said on Friday evening it was “conducting extensive strikes and mobilising troops to achieve operational control in the areas of Gaza”.

Earlier, it said it had struck “over 150 terror targets” across the Gaza Strip in the previous 24 hours – an average of one airstrike every 10 minutes.

Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed more than 250 people since Thursday morning, the Hamas-run health ministry in the region said on Friday.

Nurse and his family killed in strike

The impact of this new bombardment is cataclysmic, as this video of an Israeli airstrike in Jabalia, northern Gaza, verified by Sky News, shows.

Other videos show huge smoke clouds rising from airstrikes on residential neighbourhoods surrounding the city’s Indonesian Hospital.

The hospital’s director, Dr Marwan al Sultan, told Sky News: “There is a shortage of everything except death.”

Among those killed in Jabalia on Friday was 42-year old Yahya Shehab, a nurse for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).

He was killed alongside his wife Tamara, 37, and their five children: Sarah, 18, Anas, 16, Maryam, 14, Aya, 12 and Abdul, 11.

He is survived by his niece Huda, 27, a civil engineer, who lives nearby with her husband Ahmad Ngat, 31, and their two young sons, Mohammed, seven, and Yusuf, four.

Ahmad remembers Yahya as kind and generous, and that he would use his skills as a nurse to treat Mohammed and Yusuf whenever they were sick.

“His kids were great too,” Ahmad says. “May God have mercy on them.”

Operation Gideon Chariot

An Israeli official said Friday’s strikes were preparatory actions in the lead-up to a larger operation.

Earlier this month, Israel’s security cabinet approved “Operation Gideon Chariot” – a plan to “capture” all of Gaza and force its entire population to move to a small enclave in the southern Gaza Strip.

At the time, a defence official said the operation would go ahead if no hostage deal was reached by the end of US President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East. That visit ended on Friday 16 May.

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Hamas had proposed releasing all hostages in exchange for a permanent end to the war. Last month, Hamas turned down Israel’s offer of a temporary ceasefire in exchange for the militant group laying down its weapons and releasing half the living hostages.

Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who sits in the security cabinet, said of Operation Gideon Chariot that Gaza would be “entirely destroyed”, and that its population will “leave in great numbers to third countries”.

Ahmad says he is ready to leave Gaza with his family at the earliest opportunity.

“We want to live our lives,” he says.

His wife Huda grieving the loss of her uncle Yahya, is seven months pregnant. The family are constantly struggling to find enough food for her and the children, he says.

“Unfortunately, she suffers greatly,” Ahmad says. “She developed gestational diabetes during this pregnancy.”

Israel has prevented the entry of all food, fuel and water since 2 March. On Monday, a UN-backed report warned that one in five people in Gaza were facing starvation.

Satellite imagery may show new aid hubs

Under new proposals backed by the US, Israel now intends to control the distribution of aid via private military contractors.

The proposals, set to start operating by the end of May, would see aid distributed from militarised compounds in four locations around the Gaza Strip.

Satellite imagery from recent weeks shows Israel has constructed four compounds which could be used for aid distribution.

Construction began in April and was completed by early May.

Three of these are clustered together in the southwest corner of the Gaza Strip, with one in the central Netzarim corridor.

None are located in northern Gaza, where Ahmad and Huda’s family live.

The UN has called this a “deliberate attempt to weaponise” aid distribution and has refused to participate.

The planned aid distribution system is being coordinated by a new non-profit, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was set up in February in Switzerland.

Its board includes a former head of World Central Kitchen, as well as people with close ties to the US military and private military contractors.

Proposals drawn up by the GHF say the four planned aid distribution sites could feed around 1.2 million people, approximately 60% of Gaza’s population.

The GHF later requested that Israel establish additional distribution points.

Speaking to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, UN Relief chief Tom Fletcher said the plan “makes starvation a bargaining chip”.

“It is cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement,” he said.

Large areas of Gaza have already been razed in recent weeks, including vast tracts of the southern city of Rafah, where many had fled during the war’s early stages.

Sky News analysis of satellite imagery shows approximately two-thirds of Rafah’s built-up area (66%) has been reduced entirely to rubble, with buildings across much of the rest of the city showing signs of severe damage.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch executive director Federico Borello said the UK and US have a duty, under the Genocide Convention, to “stop Israeli authorities from starving civilians in Gaza”.

He said: “Hearing Israeli officials flaunt plans to squeeze Gaza’s two million people into an even tinier area while making the rest of the land uninhabitable should be treated like a five-alarm fire in London, Brussels, Paris, and Washington.”

Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said on Friday that Israel’s new offensive is intended to secure the release of its hostages. “Our objective is to get them home and get Hamas to relinquish power,” he said.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.