Ukraine and Russia agreed to a 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner swap — the war’s largest — during their first direct peace talks in three years, in Istanbul. Kyiv is now pushing for a Zelensky-Putin summit and a clear ceasefire plan.
Published On 16 May 202516 May 2025
Senators accuse US President Donald Trump of engaging in ‘corruption of US foreign policy’ with defence deals.
A group of United States senators is trying to halt $3.5bn in weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar over concerns that the deals will personally benefit the family of US President Donald Trump.
Two “resolutions of disapproval” were submitted on Thursday in the US by Democratic Senators Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen, Brian Schatz and Tim Kaine, along with Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who often votes with Democrats.
The legislators also issued statements accusing President Trump, who is concluding a trip to the Middle East, of actively engaging in the “corruption of US foreign policy” over the timing of the sales and recent investment deals.
The Department of State this week approved the $1.6bn sale to the UAE of Chinook helicopters and equipment, F-16 aircraft components, and spare and repair parts to support Apache, Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters. Initial reporting cited the figure as close to $1.3bn, but the $1.6bn figure was used in a statement from the legislators. The lawmakers are also seeking to block $1.9bn in sales to Qatar of MQ-9B Predator drones and associated equipment, which was approved by the State Department in March.
The legislators accuse Trump of accepting favours in exchange for the deals, citing news from April that the Emirati investment firm MGX would use a stablecoin – a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to another asset – issued by the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial to finance a $2bn investment in the cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
The Trump family is reported to have made millions off niche cryptocurrencies like the $TRUMP “meme coin” since the president returned to the White House in January.
I know Trump’s crypto scams can seem hard to understand. So I went the Senate floor to break down the most outrageous one.
A foreign government is investing $2 billion in Trump’s coin to get favorable treatment from the Administration. A wild corruption.
Here’s how it works. pic.twitter.com/pxLSlZH2QN
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 13, 2025
In addition to business dealings, the senators also expressed fears that US weapons sent to the UAE could end up in the hands of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which is allegedly backed by the UAE and has played a critical role in Sudan’s civil war.
“The US should not be delivering weapons to the UAE as it aids and abets this humanitarian disaster and gross human rights violations,” Van Hollen said, citing Sudan’s civil war.
The senators also cited Qatar’s offer of a Boeing 747 jumbo for the president’s temporary use as Air Force One. The offer has drawn criticism from both Democrats and some Republicans because it would be the most expensive foreign gift ever exchanged between a foreign government and an elected US official.
“There’s nothing Donald Trump loves more than being treated like a king, and that’s exactly why foreign governments are trying to buy his favour with a luxury jumbo jet and investments in Trump’s crypto scams,” Murphy said in a statement.
When asked about the offer of the aircraft, Trump blamed Boeing’s lack of progress in building a new Air Force One and said he would be “stupid” to refuse a free plane.
“It’s not a gift to me, it’s a gift to the Department of Defense,” he said.
It is unclear when a vote will happen on the joint “resolutions of disapproval”, but the US political news outlet The Hill said that due to the nature of the bills, Democrats will likely force them to the floor of the Senate.
US President Donald Trump, who promised to end America’s foreign military campaigns, has paid a visit to US troops stationed in Qatar. Trump praised the US’s deadly arsenal, hit out at his predecessor and made fun of France.
Published On 15 May 202515 May 2025
The magistrate ruled that apprehended migrants may not have been aware they were crossing into a military zone.
A United States judge in the southwestern state of New Mexico has dismissed trespassing charges against dozens of migrants apprehended in a military zone recently created under President Donald Trump.
The military zone is one of two so far that the Trump administration has created along the US-Mexico border, in order to deter undocumented migration into the country.
Entering a military zone can result in heightened criminal penalties. As many as 400 cases have since been filed in Las Cruces, New Mexico, alleging security violations and crimes like trespassing on restricted military property.
But starting late on Wednesday and continuing into Thursday, Chief US Magistrate Judge Gregory Wormuth began issuing dismissals at the request of the federal public defender’s office in Las Cruces.
Wormuth ruled that the government had failed to demonstrate that the migrants knew they were entering a military zone.
“The criminal complaint fails to establish probable cause to believe the defendant knew he/she was entering” the military zone, Wormuth wrote in his orders dismissing charges.
The ruling is the latest legal setback for the Trump administration, as it seeks to impose stricter restrictions and penalties for undocumented immigration. But the president’s broad use of executive power has drawn the ire of civil liberties groups, who argue that Trump is trampling constitutional safeguards.
Establishing new military zones has been part of Trump’s strategy to reduce the flow of migration into the US.
Normally, the crime of “improper entry by an alien” carries fines or a prison sentence of up to six months. But trespassing on a military zone comes with steeper penalties than a typical border crossing, and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has warned of a possible combined sentence of up to 10 years.
“You can be detained. You will be detained,” Hegseth warned migrants. “You will be interdicted by US troops and border patrol working together.”
On April 18, the first military zone was unveiled, called the “New Mexico National Defence Area”. It covered a stretch of about 274 kilometres — or 180 miles — along the border with Mexico, extending into land formerly held by the Department of the Interior.
Hegseth has said he would like to see more military zones set up along the border, and in early May, a second one was announced near El Paso, Texas. That strip was approximately 101km or 63 miles.
“Let me be clear: if you cross into the National Defense Area, you will be charged to the FULLEST extent of the law,” Hegseth wrote in a social media post.
Hegseth has previously stated that the military will continue to expand such zones until they have achieved “100 percent operational control” of the border.
Trump and his allies have frequently compared undocumented immigration to an “invasion”, and they have used that justification to invoke wartime laws like the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
In a court brief on behalf of the Trump administration, US Attorney Ryan Ellison argued that the new military zones were a vital bulwark for national security. He also rejected the idea that innocent people might be caught in those areas.
“The New Mexico National Defense Area is a crucial installation necessary to strengthen the authority of servicemembers to help secure our borders and safeguard the country,” Ellison said.
He noted that the government had put up “restricted area” signs along the border. But the public defender’s office in New Mexico argued that the government had not done enough to make it sufficiently clear to migrants in the area that they were entering a military zone.
In the US, the public defenders noted that trespassing requires that the migrants were aware of the restriction and acted “in defiance of that regulation for some nefarious or bad purpose”.
Despite this week’s dismissals, the migrants involved still face less severe charges of crossing the border illegally.
Video shows the moment an Israeli missile hits Gaza’s European Hospital in Khan Younis.
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Four days after India and Pakistan reached a ceasefire after a rapid escalation in a military conflict between them, key differences between their battlefield claims remain unresolved.
Among them is Pakistan’s assertion that it shot down five Indian fighter jets on May 7, the first day of fighting, in response to Indian attacks on its territory.
As a battle of narratives takes over from the actual fighting, Al Jazeera takes stock of what we know about that claim, and why, if true, it matters.
Tensions between India and Pakistan erupted into military confrontation on May 7 after India bombed nine sites across six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
India said it had struck what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in response to the deadly April 22 killings of tourists by suspected rebels in India-administered Kashmir.
Gunmen on April 22 shot dead 25 male tourists and a local pony rider in the picturesque meadows of Pahalgam, triggering outrage and calls for revenge in India. New Delhi blamed Pakistan for supporting the fighters responsible for the attack, a charge Islamabad denied.
Pakistan said Indian forces on May 7 struck two cities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and four sites in the country’s largest province, Punjab. It said civilians were killed in the attacks. India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rejected the Pakistani claims, reiterating that Indian forces “struck only those who harmed our innocents”.
Over the next four days, the two nuclear-armed neighbours were engaged in tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases, while unleashing drones into each other’s territories.
Amid fears of a nuclear exchange, top officials from the United States made calls to Indian and Pakistani officials to end the conflict.
On May 10, US President Donald Trump announced that Washington had successfully mediated a ceasefire between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Despite initial accusations of violations by both sides, the ceasefire has continued to hold so far.
Pakistan reported on Tuesday that Indian strikes killed at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children, while India has said at least five military personnel and 16 civilians died.
Speaking to Al Jazeera shortly after the May 7 attacks, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Islamabad, in retaliation, had shot down five Indian jets, a drone, and many quadcopters.
Later in the day, Pakistan’s military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said the warplanes had all been downed inside Indian territory, and aircraft from neither side crossed into the other’s territory during the attacks – an assertion India seconded.
“Neither India nor Pakistan had any need to send their own aircraft out of their own national airspace,” British defence analyst Michael Clarke told Al Jazeera.
“Their standoff weapons all had long enough ranges to reach their evident targets whilst flying in their own airspace,” Clarke, who is a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, added.
On Friday, Pakistan’s Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed claimed that among the five downed aircraft were three Rafales, a MiG-29, and an Su-30, providing electronic signatures of the aircraft, in addition to the exact locations where the planes were hit.
The battle between Pakistani and Indian jets lasted for just over an hour, Ahmed, who is also the deputy chief of operations, told reporters.
He stated that the confrontation featured at least 60 Indian aircraft, among them 14 French-made Rafales, while Pakistan deployed 42 “hi-tech aircraft,” including American F-16s and Chinese JF-17s and J-10s.
After Chinese state news outlet The Global Times wrote that Pakistan had brought down Indian fighter planes, India’s embassy in China described the report as “disinformation”.
However, beyond that, New Delhi has not formally confirmed or denied the reports.
Asked specifically whether Pakistan had managed to down Indian jets, India’s Director General of Air Operations AK Bharti avoided a direct answer.
“We are in a combat scenario and losses are a part of it,” he said. “As for details, at this time I would not like to comment on that as we are still in combat and give advantage to the adversary. All our pilots are back home.”
Beyond the official accounts, local and international media outlets have reported different versions of Pakistan’s claims of downing the jets.
According to Indian security sources who spoke to Al Jazeera, three fighter jets crashed inside India-controlled territory.
They did not confirm which country the warplanes belonged to. However, with neither side suggesting that Pakistani planes crossed into Indian airspace, any debris in Indian-controlled territory likely comes from an Indian plane.
Reuters news agency also reported, citing four government sources in Indian-administered Kashmir, that three fighter jets crashed in the region. Reports in CNN said that at least two jets crashed, while a French source told the US outlet that at least one Rafale jet had been shot down.
Photos taken by AP news agency photo journalists showed debris of an aircraft in the Pulwama district in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Defence analyst Clarke said if India has indeed lost a Rafale, that would certainly be “embarrassing”.
“If it came down inside Indian territory, which must be the case if one was destroyed, then India will want to keep it only as a rumour for as long as possible,” he added.
“India has said that “losses” are inevitable, and that is probably as near as they will get to admitting a specific aircraft loss for a while.”
Islamabad, Pakistan – Four days after a May 10 ceasefire pulled India and Pakistan back from the brink of a full-fledged war following days of rapidly escalating military tensions, a battle of narratives has broken out, with each country claiming “victory” over the other.
The conflict erupted after gunmen killed 26 civilians in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, on April 22. A little-known armed group, The Resistance Front (TRF), initially claimed responsibility, with India accusing Pakistan of backing it. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised retaliation, even though Pakistan denied any role in the attack.
After a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic measures between the neighbours, tensions exploded militarily. Early on the morning of May 7, India fired missiles at what it described as “terrorist” bases not just in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, but also four sites in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
In the following days, both sides launched killer drone strikes at each other’s territory and blamed one another for initiating the attacks.
Tensions peaked on Saturday when India and Pakistan fired missiles at each other’s military bases. India initially targeted three Pakistani airbases, including one in Rawalpindi, the garrison city which is home to the headquarters of the Pakistan Army, before then launching projectiles at other Pakistani bases. Pakistan’s missiles targeted military installations across the country’s frontier with India and Indian-administered Kashmir, striking at least four facilities.
Then, as the world braced for total war between the nuclear-armed neighbours, US President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire, which he claimed had been mediated by the United States. Pakistan express gratitude to the US, even as India insisted the decision to halt fighting was made solely by the two neighbours without any third-party intervention.
Since the announcement, both countries have held news conferences, presenting “evidence” of their “achievements”. On Monday, senior military officials in India and Pakistan spoke by phone, pledging to uphold the ceasefire in the coming days.
However, analysts say neither side can truly claim to have emerged from the post-April 22 crisis with a definite upper hand. Instead, they say, both India and Pakistan can claim strategic gains even as they each also suffered losses.
The military standoff last week – like three of the four wars between India and Pakistan – had roots in the two countries’ dispute over the Kashmir region.
Pakistan and India administer different parts of Kashmir, along with China, which governs two narrow strips. India claims all of Kashmir, while Pakistan claims the part India – but not Islamabad’s ally China – administers.
After the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, which led to the creation of Bangladesh, New Delhi and Islamabad inked the Simla Agreement, which, among other things, committed them to settling “their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations”.
Since then, India has argued that the Kashmir dispute – and other tensions between the neighbours – can only be settled bilaterally, without third-party intervention. Pakistan, however, has cited United Nations resolutions to call for the global community to play a role in pushing for a solution.
On Sunday, Trump said that the US was ready to help mediate a resolution to the Kashmir dispute. “I will work with you both to see if, after a thousand years, a solution can be arrived at, concerning Kashmir,” the US president posted on his Truth Social platform.
Walter Ladwig, a senior lecturer at King’s College London, said the latest conflict gave Pakistan a chance to internationalise the Kashmir issue, which had been its longstanding strategic goal.
“Islamabad welcomed mediation from a range of countries, including the US, framing the resulting ceasefire as evidence of the need for external involvement,” Ladwig told Al Jazeera.
By contrast, he said, India had to accept a ceasefire brokered externally, rather than ending the conflict on its own terms.
Sudha Ramachandran, the South Asia editor for The Diplomat magazine, said that Modi’s government in India may have strengthened its nationalist support base through its military operation, though it may have also lost some domestic political points with the ceasefire.
“It was able to score points among its nationalist hawkish support base. But the ceasefire has not gone down well among hardliners,” Ramachandran said.
Highlighting ‘terrorism’: India’s gain
However, analysts also say the spiral in tensions last week, and its trigger in the form of the Pahalgam attack, helped India too.
“Diplomatically, India succeeded in refocusing international attention on Pakistan-based militant groups, renewing calls for Islamabad to take meaningful action,” Ladwig said.
He referred to “the reputational cost [for Pakistan] of once again being associated with militant groups operating from its soil”.
“While Islamabad denied involvement and called for neutral investigations, the burden of proof in international forums increasingly rests on Pakistan to demonstrate proactive counterterrorism efforts,” Ladwig added.
India has long accused Pakistan of financing, training and sheltering armed groups that support the secession of Kashmir from India. Pakistan insists it only provides diplomatic and moral support to Kashmir’s separatist movement.
Planes down may be Pakistan’s gain
India claimed that its strikes on May 7 killed more than 100 “terrorists”. Pakistan said the Indian missiles had hit mosques and residential areas, killing 40 civilians, including children, apart from 11 military personnel.
Islamabad also claimed that it scrambled its fighter planes to respond and had brought down multiple Indian jets.
India has neither confirmed nor denied those claims, but Pakistan’s military has publicly shared details that it says identify the planes that were shot down. French and US officials have confirmed that at least one Rafale and one Russian-made jet were lost by India.
Indian officials have also confirmed to Al Jazeera that at least two planes crashed in Indian-administered territory, but did not clarify which country they belonged to.
With both India and Pakistan agreeing that neither side’s jets had crossed their frontier, the presence of debris from a crashed plane in Indian-administered territory suggests they were likely Indian, say analysts.
The ceasefire coming after that suggests a gain for Pakistan, Asfandyar Mir, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera. “Especially, the downing of the aircraft confirmed by various independent sources. So, it [Pakistan] may see the ceasefire as being better for consolidating that dividend.”
Muhammad Shoaib, an academic and security analyst at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, called India’s strikes against Pakistan a strategic miscalculation. “Their reading of Pakistan’s ability to hit back was flawed,” he said.
Ludwig, however, said it would be a mistake to overstate the significance of any Pakistani successes, such as the possible downing of Indian jets. “These are, at best, symbolic victories. They do not represent a clear or unambiguous military gain,” he said.
In many ways, analysts say that the more meaty military accomplishment was India’s.
In addition to Kotli and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Indian missiles on May 7 also targeted four sites in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous state and the country’s economic nerve-centre.
Over the next two days, India also fired drones that reached deep inside Pakistani territory, including major Pakistani population centres such as Lahore and Karachi.
And on May 10, Indian missiles hit three Pakistani airbases that were deeper in Pakistan’s Punjab than the Indian bases Pakistan hit that day were in Indian territory.
Simply put, India demonstrated greater reach than Pakistan did. It was the first time since the 1971 war between them that India had managed to hit Punjab.
Launching a military response not just across the Line of Control, the two countries’ de-facto border in Kashmir, but deep into Pakistan had been India’s primary goal, said Ramchandran. And India achieved it.
Ludwig, too, said that India’s success in targeting Punjab represented a serious breach of Pakistan’s defensive posture.
Military officials from both countries who spoke on Monday and agreed to hold the ceasefire also agreed to take immediate steps to reduce their troops’ presence along the borders. A second round of talks is expected within 48 hours.
However, later that day, Indian Prime Minister Modi said that the fighting had merely “paused”.
Still, the Stimson Center’s Mir believes the ceasefire could hold.
“Both sides face constraints and opportunities that have emerged during the course of the last week, which, on balance, make a ceasefire a better outcome for them,” he said.
Ladwig echoed that view, saying the truce reflects mutual interest in de-escalation, even if it does not resolve the tensions that led to the crisis.
“India has significantly changed the rules of the game in this episode. The Indian government seems to have completely dispensed with the game that allows Islamabad and Rawalpindi to claim plausible deniability regarding anti-Indian terrorist groups,” he said.
“What the Pakistani government and military do with groups on its soil would seem to be the key factor in determining how robust the ceasefire will be.”
Quaid-i-Azam University’s Shoaib, who is also a research fellow at George Mason University in the US, emphasised the importance of continued dialogue.
He warned that maintaining peace will depend on security dynamics in both Indian-administered Kashmir and Pakistan’s Balochistan province.
Just as India accuses Pakistan of supporting cross-border separatism, Islamabad alleges that New Delhi backs a separatist insurgency in Balochistan, a claim India denies.
“Any subsequent bout of violence has the potential to get bloodier and more widespread,” Shoaib said. “Both sides, going for a war of attrition, could inflict significant damage on urban populations, without gaining anything from the conflict.”
Human rights groups say politicians have been forcibly disappeared in recent days
Mali’s military government has dissolved all political parties after accusations from rights groups that opposition figures have been arrested.
Assimi Goita, who seized power in two army coups in 2020 and 2021, validated the decision after it was broadcast to Malians in a televised statement on Tuesday.
The parties were disbanded after demonstrations this month, demanding the country returned to democratic rule.
Protesters gathered on May 3 and 4, carrying placards with slogans reading, “Down with dictatorship, long live democracy,” in a rare public rebuke of the military government, which had promised to hold elections in 2022.
A national conference held in April recommended extending Goita’s presidency until 2030, drawing condemnation from opposition figures and human rights groups.
In response to another protest that had been planned on Friday, the military government issued a decree suspending all political activities across the country.
The move forced opposition groups to cancel the demonstration, and the government has now tightened its grip further.
The clampdown has coincided with reports of disappearances of opposition figures. Human rights groups said several politicians have been forcibly disappeared in recent days.
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Abba Alhassane, the secretary-general of the Convergence for the Development of Mali (CODEM), was “arrested” by “masked gunmen”.
That same day, El Bachir Thiam, the leader of the Yelema party, was reportedly seized by unidentified men in Kati, a town outside the capital.
On Tuesday, a CODEM member speaking on condition of anonymity told the Reuters news agency that the party had lost contact with Abdoul Karim Traore, a youth leader, and feared he too had been abducted.
Malian authorities have not commented on the reported arrests.
Goita first seized power in August 2020 amid escalating attacks from armed groups affiliated with ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
In July 2020, protests against the former civilian government were violently repressed with at least 14 people killed during a crackdown by security forces.
The military then ousted the elected government, citing its failure to tackle the armed groups.
In December last year, HRW reported that Malian soldiers alongside Russian Wagner Group fighters “deliberately killed” at least 32 civilians and burned more than 100 homes in central and northern Mali.
These are the key events on day 1,174 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Tuesday, May 13:
Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir — On Saturday morning at Fateh Kadal, a densely packed neighbourhood on the sloping embankment of the Jhelum river in Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir’s largest city, 62-year-old Hajira wrapped a cotton scarf with a brown paisley design around her shoulders.
With her face muscles tense and sweat beading across her upper lip, she sat on the cement floor of a government-run grains store.
“Can you make it quick?” she called to the person manning the store.
Hajira comes to the store every month to submit her biometric details, as required by the government to secure the release of her monthly quota of subsidised grains, which her family of four depends on.
But this time was different. The past few days have been unprecedented for residents of Indian-administered Kashmir. Drones hovered overhead, airports were shut down, explosions rang out, people were killed in cross-border fire and the region prepared for the possibility of an all-out war.
“He made me stand in the queue,” she said, flinching from knee pain, referring to the store operator. “But there’s uncertainty around. I just want my share of rice so I can quickly return. A war is coming.”
Then, on Saturday evening, Hajira breathed a sigh of relief. United States President Donald Trump announced that he had succeeded in mediating a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
“I thank Allah for this,” Hajira said, smiling sheepishly. “Perhaps he understood that I didn’t have the means to endure the financial hardship that a war-like situation would have caused.”
On Sunday morning, Trump went a step further, saying in a post on his Truth Social platform that would try to work with India and Pakistan to resolve their longstanding dispute over Kashmir, a region both countries partly control, but where they each claim the part the other administers.
Political analyst Zafar Choudhary, based in the city of Jammu in southern Indian-administered Kashmir, told Al Jazeera that New Delhi would not be happy about Trump’s statement. India has long argued that Pakistan-sponsored “terrorism” is the primary reason for tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
However, “Trump’s offer underlines the fact that Kashmir remains central to India-Pakistan confrontations”, Choudhary said.
And for Kashmiris, the hope stemming from the fragile pause in fighting between India and Pakistan, and Trump’s offer to mediate talks on Kashmir, is tempered by scepticism borne from a decades-long, desperate wait for peace.
Hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris stood in the direct line of fire between India and Pakistan in recent days.
As the neighbouring nations launched missiles and drones at each other, communities in Indian-administered Kashmir near the de-facto border with Pakistan also witnessed cross-border shelling on a scale unseen in decades, triggering an exodus of people towards safer locations.
The shadow of conflict has stalked their lives for nearly four decades, since an armed rebellion first erupted against the Indian government in the late 1980s. Then, in 2019, the government scrapped Indian-administered Kashmir’s semi-autonomous status amid a huge security crackdown – thousands of people were imprisoned.
On April 22, a brutal attack by gunmen on tourists at Pahalgam left 26 civilians dead, shattering the normalcy critics had accused India of projecting in the disputed region.
Since then, in addition to a diplomatic tit-for-tat and missile exchanges with Pakistan, the Indian government has intensified its crackdown on Indian-administered Kashmir.
It has demolished the homes of rebels accused of links to the Pahalgam attack, raided other homes across the region and detained approximately 2,800 people, 90 of whom have been booked under the Public Safety Act, a draconian preventive detention law. The police also summoned many journalists and detained at least one for “promoting secessionist ideology”.
By Sunday, while a sense of jubilation swept through the region over the ceasefire, many people were still cautious, doubtful even, about whether the truce brokered by Trump would hold.
Just hours after both countries declared a cessation of hostilities, loud explosions rang out in major urban centres across Indian-administered Kashmir as a swarm of kamikaze drones from Pakistan raced across the airspace.
Many residents raced to the terraces of their apartments and homes to capture videos of the drones being brought down by India’s defence systems, a trail of bright red dots arcing across the night sky before exploding in midair.
As part of the emergency protocols, the authorities turned off the electricity supply. Fearing that the debris from drones would fall on them, residents ran for safety. The surge of drones through the night skies also touched off sirens, triggering a sense of dread.
“I don’t think I have ever been more frightened before,” said Hasnain Shabir, a 24-year-old business graduate from Srinagar. “The streets have been robbed of all their life. If the prelude to war looks like this, I don’t know what war will look like.”
Hours after the ceasefire was announced on Saturday, India accused Pakistan of violating the truce by shelling border regions. Residents across major towns in Kashmir were on their toes, once again, after drones reappeared in the skies.
One of the worst-affected places in Kashmir these days is Uri, a picturesque town of pear orchards and walnut groves close to India’s contested border with Pakistan.
The village is surrounded by majestic mountains through which the Jhelum river flows. It is the final frontier on the Indian-administered side before the hills pave the way to Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Parts of Uri saw intense shelling, forcing the residents to leave their homes and look for safety. On May 8, officials told Al Jazeera that a woman, Nargis Bashir, was killed in her car as she and her family tried to flee the border region, like thousands of others, after flying shrapnel tore through the vehicle. Three of her family members were wounded.
Muhammad Naseer Khan, 60, a former army serviceman, was huddling in his room when Pakistani artillery fire hit a nearby military post, with metal shrapnel shards blasting through the walls of his house. “The blast has damaged one side of my home,” Khan said, wearing a traditional blue shirt and a tweed coat.
“I don’t know if this place is even liveable,” he said, his bright blue eyes betraying a sense of fear.
Despite the ceasefire, his two daughters and many others in his family who had left for a relative’s house, away from the disputed border, are sceptical about returning. “My children are refusing to return. They have no guarantee that guns won’t roar again,” he said.
Suleman Sheikh, a 28-year-old resident in Uri, recalled his childhood years when his grandfather would talk about the Bofors artillery gun stationed inside a military garrison in the nearby village of Mohra.
“He told us that the last time this gun had roared was in 1999, when India and Pakistan clashed on the icy peaks of Kargil. It is a conventional belief here that if this gun roared again, things are going to get too bad,” he said.
That’s what happened at 2am on May 8. As the Bofors gun in Mohra prepared to fire ammunition across the mountains into Pakistan, Sheikh felt the ground shaking beneath him. An hour and a half later, a shell fired from the other side hit an Indian paramilitary installation nearby, making a long hissing noise before striking with a thud.
Hours after Sheikh spoke to Al Jazeera for this report, another shell landed on his home. The rooms and the portico of his house collapsed, according to a video he shared with Al Jazeera.
He had refused to leave his home despite his family’s pleas to join them. “I was here to protect our livestock,” Sheikh said. “I didn’t want to leave them alone.”
Unlike the rest of the Kashmir Valley, where apple cultivation brings millions of dollars in income for the region, Uri is relatively poor. Villagers mostly work odd jobs for the Indian Army, which maintains large garrisons there, or farm walnuts and pears. Livestock rearing has turned into a popular vocation for many in the town.
“We have seen the firsthand experience of what war feels like. It is good that the ceasefire has taken place. But I don’t know if it will hold or not,” Sheikh said, his face downcast. “I pray that it does.”
Back in Srinagar, residents are slowly returning to the rhythm of their daily lives. Schools and colleges continue to remain closed, and people are avoiding unnecessary travel.
The scenes of racing drone fleets in the skies and the accompanying blasts are seared into public memory. “Only in the evening will we come to know whether this ceasefire has held on,” said Muskaan Wani, a student of medicine at Government Medical College, Srinagar, said on Sunday.
It did, overnight, but the tension over whether it will last remains.
Political experts attribute the general scepticism about the ceasefire to the unresolved political issues in the region – a point that was echoed in Trump’s statement on Sunday, in which he referred to a possible “solution concerning Kashmir”.
“The problem to begin with is the political alienation [of Kashmiris],” said Noor Ahmad Baba, a former professor and head of the political science department at the University of Kashmir.
“People in Kashmir feel humiliated for what has happened to them in the last few years, and there haven’t been any significant efforts to win them over. When there’s humiliation, there is suspicion.”
Others in Indian-administered Kashmir expressed their anger at both countries for ruining their lives.
“I doubt that our feelings as Kashmiris even matter,” said Furqan, a software engineer in Srinagar who only gave his first name. “Two nuclear powers fought, caused damage and casualties at the borders, gave their respective nations a spectacle to watch, their goals were achieved, and then they stopped the war.
“But the question is, who suffered the most? It’s us. For the world, we are nothing but collateral damage.”
Furqan said his friends were sceptical about the ceasefire when the two countries resumed shelling on the evening of May 10.
“We all already were like, ‘It is not gonna last,’” he said, “And then we heard the explosions again.”
Muneeb Mehraj, a 26-year-old resident of Srinagar who studies management in the northern Indian state of Punjab, echoed Furqan.
“For others, the war may be over. A ceasefire has been declared. But once again, it’s Kashmiris who have paid the price – lives lost, homes destroyed, peace shattered,” he said. “How long must this cycle continue?”
“We are exhausted,” Mehraj continued. “We don’t want another temporary pause. We want a lasting, permanent solution.”