blast

Explosives reportedly detonate during forensic investigation as part of probe into earlier blast in India’s capital New Delhi.

At least seven people have been killed and 27 more injured after a cache of confiscated explosives detonated in a police station in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city.

The stockpile exploded late on Friday night at a police station in the Nowgam area in the south of Srinagar.

Most of those killed were policemen and forensic team officials who were examining the explosives at the time of the detonation, unnamed sources told Indian broadcaster NDTV. Two officials from the Srinagar administration also died in the blast.

With five people still in critical condition, the death toll could continue to climb, according to the media outlet.

“Not a terror attack. Police say it’s a very unfortunate incident,” NDTV’s senior executive editor Aditya Raj Kaul said in a post on social media.

“The blast happened when a forensics team and the police were checking the explosive material stored at the police station,” he said.

#BREAKING: J&K Police Top Officials tell me that the massive blast at Nowgam Police Station around 11:20pm tonight happened when FSL team along with Police and Tehsildar were inspecting the large Ammonium Nitrate explosive which was confiscated earlier. Casualties in the blast.… pic.twitter.com/67U143jOFg

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) November 14, 2025

The huge blast comes days after Monday’s deadly car explosion in New Delhi, which killed at least 12 people near the city’s historic Red Fort and which officials have called a “terror” incident.

The explosion in the Indian capital occurred just hours after police arrested several people and seized explosive materials as well as assault rifles.

Police said the suspects were linked to Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), a Pakistan-based group that is seeking to end Indian rule in Kashmir, and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, a Kashmir offshoot linked to JeM.

Police in Indian-administered Kashmir also detained more than 650 people as part of their investigation following the New Delhi car blast.

According to reports, the Nowgam police station, where the blast took place on Friday, had led an investigation into posters that were displayed around the area by JeM, warning it would carry out attacks on security forces and “outsiders”.

Police said their investigation into the posters exposed a “white-collar terror ecosystem, involving radicalised professionals and students in contact with foreign handlers, operating from Pakistan and other countries”.

Police also recovered nearly 3,000kg (3 tonnes) of ammonium nitrate, a commonly used material in bomb making, saying the armed group was stockpiling enough explosives to carry out a major attack in India.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and both claim the Himalayan territory.

The two countries have fought three wars over Kashmir since the nations were partitioned in 1947, and tensions remain high between New Delhi and Islamabad over the status of the territory.

New Delhi, India – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet late Wednesday described the car explosion which jolted New Delhi earlier in the week as a “heinous terror incident, perpetrated by antinational forces”.

The Indian government’s words, two days after a slow-moving car blew up near the Red Fort, an iconic 17th-century monument in New Delhi, killing at least 13 people and wounding several, have since led to questions about how it might respond, raising concerns over the prospect of a new spike in regional tensions.

Earlier this year, in May, the Indian government had declared a new security doctrine: “Any act of terror will be treated as an act of war.”

That posture had come in the aftermath of an intense four-day air war between India and Pakistan, after India blamed Islamabad for an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 civilians.

Now, six months later, as India grapples with another attack – this time, in the heart of the national capital of the world’s most populous country – the Modi government has so far avoided blaming Pakistan.

Instead, say political analysts, New Delhi’s language suggests that it might be veering towards intensifying a crackdown on Kashmir, at a time when Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiments have skyrocketed across India in the aftermath of the car explosion.

A crackdown in Kashmir

Even before the blast in New Delhi, police teams from Indian-administered Kashmir had been carrying out raids across the national capital region, following a lead from Srinagar, which led to the seizure of a significant amount of explosives and arrests of nearly a dozen individuals.

Among the suspects are several Kashmiri doctors – including Umar Nabi, a junior doctor who is suspected of being the driver of the car that exploded – who were serving in hospitals in satellite towns outside New Delhi.

Since the explosion near the Red Fort, police in Indian-administered Kashmir have detained more than 650 people from across the Valley as they dig deeper into what sections of the Indian media are describing as a “white-collar terror module” that had gathered enough explosives for the biggest attack on India in decades, if members hadn’t been arrested.

Police teams have raided several locations, including the residences of members of banned sociopolitical outfits.

Indian forces on Thursday also demolished the home of Nabi, the alleged car driver. In recent years, Indian authorities have often demolished homes of individuals accused of crimes without any judicial order empowering them to do so, even though the Supreme Court has ordered an end to the practice. Rights groups have described the act of demolishing the homes of suspects as a form of collective punishment.

Students of medicine and practising doctors in Kashmir are also increasingly facing scrutiny – more than 50 have been questioned for hours, and some have had their devices seized for investigation.

“There is a sense of complete disbelief among all of us,” said a junior doctor at a government-run hospital in Srinagar, the capital of the federal territory of Indian-administered Kashmir.

The doctor requested anonymity to speak, fearing repercussions from the police.

The 34-year-old has seen conflict in Kashmir up close, treating injured protesters firsthand for weeks on end, during previous clashes with security forces. “But I never thought that we would be viewed with suspicion like this,” he said, adding that the explosion that killed 13 in New Delhi was “unfortunate and should be condemned”.

“It is unreal to us that a doctor can think of such an attack,” the doctor said. “But how does that malign our entire fraternity? If a professional defects and joins militants, does it mean that all professionals are terrorists?”

‘Away from Pakistan, towards an enemy within’

India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir since the nations were partitioned in 1947 as the British left the subcontinent. Today, India, Pakistan and China all control parts of Kashmir. India claims all of it, and Pakistan seeks control of all of Kashmir except the parts held by China, its ally.

After the April attack in the resort town of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, India had launched missiles deep inside Pakistan. Modi claimed that the attacks killed more than 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan insisted that civilians and soldiers, not armed fighters, were killed. Pakistan, which had rejected Indian accusations of a role in the April killings in Pahalgam, hit back.

Over four days, the nuclear-armed neighbours fired missiles and drones across their contested border, striking each other’s military bases.

When the Modi government agreed to a ceasefire on May 10, it faced domestic criticism from the opposition – and some sections of its own supporters – for not continuing with attacks on Pakistan. The government then said Operation Sindoor is “only on pause, not over”.

Six months later, though, New Delhi has been significantly more cautious about who to blame for the Delhi blast.

“There is a lot of due outrage this time, but there is no mention of Pakistan,” said Anuradha Bhasin, a veteran editor in Kashmir and author of a book, A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Article 370, about how the region changed under the Hindu majoritarian Modi government. The Kashmir administration has banned her book in the region.

“This time, it is not about a crackdown on Pakistan,” she told Al Jazeera. “The public anger is being directed away from Pakistan, towards ‘an enemy within’.”

She said the Modi government appeared to be aware that finger-pointing at Pakistan “would create pressure from the public to take [military] action” against the neighbour.

Instead, she said, “public anger can be assuaged by creating any enemy.”

‘Pandering to domestic gallery’

Analysts point to the Modi government’s use of the term “antinational forces” to describe the alleged perpetrators of the Delhi attack.

That’s a phrase the Modi government has previously used to describe academics, journalists and students who have criticised it, as well as other protesters and dissidents. Since Modi took office in 2014, India has continuously slid in multiple democracy indices for alleged persecution of minorities in the country and its crackdown on press freedom.

To Sumantra Bose, a political scientist whose work focuses on the intersection of nationalism and conflict in South Asia, the Indian cabinet resolution was significant in the way that it shied “away from naming and blaming Pakistan, which was a rather reflexive reaction for decades”.

After the fighting in May, the Indian government learned, the hard way, Bose said, that “there is no appetite and indeed no tolerance anywhere in the world for a military escalation in South Asia.”

Bose was referring to the lukewarm global support that India received after it bombed Pakistan without providing any public evidence of Islamabad’s links with the attackers in Pahalgam.

Instead, India was left disputing the repeated assertions of United States President Donald Trump that he had brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad, even as he hosted Pakistan’s army chief, praised him, and strengthened ties with India’s western neighbour. India has long held the position that all disputes with Pakistan must be resolved bilaterally, without intervention from any other country.

The contrast in New Delhi’s response to this week’s blast, so far, appears to have struck US State Secretary Marco Rubio, too.

Reacting to the Delhi blast, Rubio said “it clearly was a terrorist attack,” and “the Indians need to be commended. They’ve been very measured, cautious, and very professional on how they’re carrying out this investigation.”

India’s new security doctrine – that an act of terror is an act of war – “was a dangerous, slippery slope”, said Bose, who has also authored books on the conflict in Kashmir. His last work, Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, published in 2021, is also banned in Kashmir.

The doctrine, he said, was aimed at pandering to Modi’s “domestic gallery” – a way of showing muscular strength, even at the risk of “serious military escalation” between India and Pakistan.

Now, by using terms like “white-collar terrorism”, analysts said Indian officials risked blurring the line between Kashmiri Muslims and armed rebels fighting Indian rule.

“The term doesn’t make sense to me, but it does put the needle of suspicion on young, educated Muslim professionals,” said Bose.

“The fact has been for decades that militants come from all sorts of social backgrounds in Kashmir – from rural farming families, working-class backgrounds, to educated professionals,” Bose argued. “If anything, it reflects the discontent that has been in the society across the groups.”

Bhasin, the editor from Kashmir, said the Indian government’s posture would lead to “adverse economic impact for Kashmiri Muslims and further ghettoisation, where they find it harder to get jobs or a place to rent”.

‘Everyone is so scared’

Kashmiris across India are already facing the brunt of hate and anger following the Delhi blast.

Since the bomb exploded on Monday in New Delhi, Indian social media platforms have been rife with rampant hate speech against Muslims.

Nasir Khuehami, the national convener of a Kashmiri student association, has spent four days fielding calls from Kashmiri Muslims.

“Across northern Indian states, Kashmiris are being asked to vacate their homes, there is active profiling going on, and everyone is so scared,” Khuehami told Al Jazeera, speaking from his home in Kashmir.

This is only the latest instance of this pattern playing out: An attack in Kashmir, or by a Kashmiri armed rebel, has often led to harassment and beating of Kashmiri Muslims – students, professionals, traders, or even labourers – living in India.

Khuehami said “to end this endless cycle of crises for Kashmiris” – where they are detained at home and abused outside – “the government needs to take confidence-building measures.”

Otherwise, Khuehami said, the Modi government was marginalising Kashmiris in India. By doing that, he said, India would be playing into the hands of the very country it accuses of wanting to grab Kashmir: Pakistan.

Sri Lanka governing body instructs national team to continue tour in Pakistan despite several players wanting to leave.

Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) has told its players to remain in Pakistan or risk facing a “formal review” after members of the squad declared their intention to depart early from their tour of the country due to security concerns.

The players expressed fears for their safety after Tuesday’s suicide bombing in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, which killed 12 people and wounded 27 outside a court.

The SLC issued a statement on Wednesday saying it instructed the team to go ahead with their ongoing tour of Pakistan as scheduled despite an unspecified number of players asking to return home.

“If any player, players, or member of the support staff return despite SLC’s directives, a formal review will be conducted … and an appropriate decision will be made,” the board said.

It added that replacements would be sent to ensure the tour continues without interruption.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) confirmed that the second one-day international (ODI) scheduled for Thursday has been moved back by one day while Saturday’s third match will now be played on Sunday. Both will be in Rawalpindi.

“Grateful to the Sri Lankan team for their decision to continue the Pakistan tour,” PCB Chairman Mohsin Naqvi said on social media. “The spirit of sportsmanship and solidarity shines bright.”

Six Sri Lankan players were wounded in March 2009 when gunmen opened fire on their team bus as it was driving to Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore for a Test match.

The incident led to international teams staying away from Pakistan for nearly a decade.

Pakistan beat Sri Lanka by six runs in the opening ODI in Rawalpindi on Tuesday, a game that went ahead despite the suicide attack in adjacent Islamabad.

The PCB said security around the visiting team has been tightened since the attack.

Naqvi met Sri Lankan players at their Islamabad hotel on Wednesday and assured them of their safety, Pakistani officials said.

Sri Lanka are playing in the three-match ODI series against Pakistan before taking part in a T20 tri-series tournament against the hosts and Zimbabwe November 17-29.

At least 13 people were killed and 20 injured when a car exploded near the Red Fort metro station in India’s capital New Delhi on Monday evening. Police say the blast, believed to have originated from a Hyundai i20 car, is being investigated under anti-terrorism laws.

An explosion near New Delhi’s Red Fort reportedly has killed at least eight people. Footage from the scene showed a smouldering vehicle frames and scattered wreckage.

Thailand says ‘hostility … has not decreased’ and deal on hold until Cambodia meets unspecified demands.

Thailand has suspended the implementation of a United States-brokered peace agreement with neighbouring Cambodia after a landmine blast near their border injured two of its soldiers.

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said after Monday’s incident that all action set to be carried out under the truce will be halted until Thailand’s demands, which remain unspecified, are met.

“The hostility towards our national security has not decreased as we thought it would,” Anutin asserted. He did not elaborate on what Thailand’s demands were.

There was no immediate response from the Cambodian government.

Simmering

Thailand and Cambodia signed a ceasefire on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Malaysia last month after territorial disputes between the two Southeast Asian countries led to five days of border clashes in July.

Those hostilities killed at least 43 people and displaced more than 300,000 civilians living along the border.

The Thai army said in a statement that Monday’s mine explosion in Sisaket province injured two soldiers.

Thai Defence Minister Natthaphon Narkphanit said the army is still investigating whether the mine was newly laid.

Thailand has previously accused Cambodia of laying new mines in violation of the truce, a charge that the Cambodian government denies.

Similar landmine explosions have occurred both before and since the deal, and tension has simmered.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, Thailand should release 18 Cambodian soldiers, and both sides must begin removing heavy weapons and land mines from the border.

Natthaphon said Thailand will postpone the release of the Cambodian soldiers, initially scheduled for this week.

The two sides have reported some progress on arms removal, but Thailand has accused Cambodia of obstructing mine clearance.

Cambodia said it’s committed to all terms of the truce and urged Thailand to release its soldiers as soon as possible.

Complex issues

Thailand and Cambodia agreed to a truce mediated by Malaysia in July after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs.

The dispute is among eight conflicts that Trump has taken credit for resolving, although critics have noted that the peace deals he has helped to initiate often implant swift and simplistic ceasefires, leaving complex issues behind the conflicts unresolved and likely to reignite hostilities.

While the Thai-Cambodian truce has generally held since July 29, both countries have traded allegations of ceasefire breaches.

Analysts said a more comprehensive peace pact adjudicating the century-long territorial dispute at the core of the conflict is needed.