Gunmen behind Kashmir terror attack killed in raid, says India
Amit Shah, India's home affairs minister, told parliament that three 'terrorists' were eliminated in a joint police-army operation near the disputed city of Srinagar.
He claimed the attackers were Pakistani nationals – a charge Islamabad denies – and said their identities were confirmed through forensic and ballistic tests.
'I want to inform the House about the elimination of three terrorists in a joint operation by the Indian Army, CRPF [Central Reserve Police Force], and Jammu and Kashmir Police in Dachigam, Kashmir, yesterday,' Mr Shah told MPs.
He named the three as Suleman, Hamza Afghani and Zibran and said they were involved in the killing of 'our innocent civilians in Baisaran Valley' near Pahalgam.
'We had ensured that the terrorists responsible for the Pahalgam terror attack could not flee to Pakistan,' Mr Shah said, claiming that two of them were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a UN-designated Islamist terrorist organisation based in Pakistan.
India's opposition leaders have accused the government of 'severe security lapses' and questioned why it has taken this much time to catch the attackers.
On April 22, 26 people were killed when gunmen emerged from the forests near Pahalgam and opened fire with automatic weapons. Most of the dead were Hindu tourists, with one from Nepal.
Survivors said the attackers separated the men from the women and children, and ordered some of the men to recite the Muslim declaration of faith.
A group calling itself The Resistance Front (TRF) initially claimed responsibility, before later retracting its statement. Earlier this month, the US designated the TRF as a 'front and proxy' for LeT.
India said Pakistan had supported the attackers, an accusation Islamabad refuted.
The massacre sparked a short conflict between the nuclear-armed states. Between May 7 and a US-brokered ceasefire on May 10, both sides fired missiles and drones into each other's territories, killing more than 70 people.
Pakistan claimed it shot down six Indian warplanes including three French-made Rafale jets, which India has not yet confirmed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Growing number of Jewish American groups speak out over Gaza famine
As global outrage intensifies over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a growing number of prominent Jewish American organizations, including some traditional defenders of Israel, are speaking out and imploring the country to ensure that humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza. This week, a UN-backed food security group warned that a 'worst-case scenario of famine' is unfolding in Gaza and health authorities there report dozens of deaths from starvation. On Sunday, the American Jewish Committee, a prominent Jewish advocacy organization, released a statement affirming that it stands with Israel in what it described as 'its justified war to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages'. At the same time, the group called for Israel to take steps to alleviate civilian suffering. 'We feel immense sorrow for the grave toll this war has taken on Palestinian civilians, and we are deeply concerned about worsening food insecurity in Gaza,' the statement read. 'We urge Israel, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the UN, and all responsible parties involved in aid distribution to increase cooperation and coordination in order to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches Palestinian civilians in Gaza.' The GHF is an Israel- and US-backed aid group that has attracted condemnation for the killings of hundreds of civilians seeking food at the hands of Israeli forces and private contractors. The AJC statement reflected a cautious critique of Israel's aid blockade echoed by other groups noteworthy for their typically staunch support of the country, even as their statements condemned Hamas for refusing to release the Israeli hostages it continues to hold. The Reform movement in North America, which represents the largest Jewish denomination in the US, also issued a lengthy statement: 'Neither escalating military pressure nor restricting humanitarian aid has brought Israel closer to securing a hostage deal or ending the war,' it read. 'Hamas has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice the Palestinian people in its pursuit of Israel's destruction, but Israel must not sacrifice its own moral standing in return. Starving Gazan civilians neither will bring Israel the 'total victory' over Hamas it seeks, nor can it be justified by Jewish values or humanitarian law.' The Rabbinical Assembly, a New York-based association of conservative rabbis, said last week that they were 'increasingly concerned about the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza' and called for 'urgent action to alleviate civilian suffering and ensure aid delivery'. 'Even as we believe Hamas could end this suffering immediately through the release of the hostages and care for its civilian population, the Israeli government must do everything in its power to ensure humanitarian aid reaches those in need,' it added. 'The Jewish tradition calls upon us to ensure the provision of food, water, and medical supplies as a top priority.' Jewish groups associated with the left have been prominent fixtures at protests against Israel's offensive since it began. On Tuesday, 27 rabbis and Jewish clergy affiliated with the group Jews for Food Aid for People in Gaza were arrested at a protest in the Washington office of the Senate majority leader, John Thune. But it appears clear that discomfort has significantly broadened outside the Jewish left. On Monday, eight rabbis were arrested outside the Israeli consulate in New York while protesting against the humanitarian crisis in Gaza – including clergy who had not been so outspoken before. 'The protests we've typically seen at the Israeli consulate in places like that are from the further left of the community,' Phylisa Wisdom, executive director of New York Jewish Agenda, told Gothamist. 'This represents an escalation from rabbis in this political lane.' More than 1,200 rabbis have signed a public letter calling on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. 'The Jewish people face a grave moral crisis, threatening the very basis of Judaism as the ethical voice that it has been since the age of Israel's prophets,' reads the letter. 'We cannot remain silent in confronting it.' The developments reflect shifting public support for Israel and the Israeli government within the US, which has accelerated as the war has gone on. A recent Gallup poll reported that support for Israel's military action in Gaza has precipitously declined among US adults, and is now at 32% – the lowest reading since Gallup first asked the question in November 2023. Support for Israel drops further among younger Americans – including US Jews. 'It's a tense time in the Jewish family group chats,' Ezra Klein wrote in a recent New York Times column. 'The consensus that held American Jewry together for generations is breaking down.' While emotional attachment to Israel is widespread among Jewish Americans, polling has consistently found that support for the state's current policies drops with age, a phenomenon perhaps best reflected in the community's support for the New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whom opponents have sought to tar with accusations of antisemitism over his vocal support for Palestinian rights. Despite those accusations, however, a recent poll found him leading with 67% of the votes of American Jewish voters in New York under the age of 44. That figure dropped to 25% of voters over 45. 'Zohran Mamdani's triumph in New York City's Democratic primary for mayor has forced, among many Jews, a reckoning with how far they have drifted from one another,' Klein wrote. Organizers of an action planned for Monday in New York City hope that groups that have not turned out before will do so to protest under the banner 'Jews Say: No More'. 'Our tradition teaches us that if we can protest [against] our people's actions and we don't, we are responsible,' said IfNotNow's executive director, Morriah Kaplan, in a statement to the Guardian. The group is helping organize Monday's action. 'As Jews and as Americans, whose government is funding this atrocity, we all must choose whether we want to bear responsibility for a policy of forced mass starvation.' The shift is also playing out within institutions whose members want their leaders to take a tougher stance on a country many had long reflexively supported. More than 200 alumni from Young Judaea, a Zionist youth group, this week called on the organization in an open letter to depart from its pro-Israel line to speak out against starvation in Gaza and call for a permanent ceasefire, including a release of the hostages. 'We see our families and friends, colleagues and teachers, rabbis and Jewish institutions – in Israel and abroad – join a growing movement to stand courageously in opposition to these policies,' the letter reads. 'Young Judaea cannot remain silent in this moment and maintain any moral credibility.'
BBC News
3 hours ago
- BBC News
Evyatar David's family condemns Hamas video of emaciated Israeli hostage
The family of Israeli hostage Evyatar David held by Hamas in Gaza has accused the group of deliberately starving him as part of a "propaganda campaign"."He is being starved purely to serve Hamas's propaganda," the family said on Saturday, a day after Hamas released a video showing an emaciated David in a narrow concrete 24, has been in captivity since his seizure by Hamas at a music festival in southern Israel on 7 October 2023."We are forced to witness our beloved son and brother, Evyatar David, deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas's tunnels in Gaza - a living skeleton, buried alive," the family statement added. The hostage's family also urged the Israeli government and the world community to do "everything possible to save Evyatar".In the video released by Hamas, Evyatar David is heard saying "I haven't eaten for days... I barely got drinking water" and is seen digging what he says will be his own its attack on Israel nearly two years ago, Hamas seized 251 hostages. David is one of 49 hostages who Israel says are still being held in Gaza. This includes 27 hostages who are believed to be dead. Israel has been accused by aid agencies of pushing Gaza towards famine by weaponising food in its war against Hamas - an allegation it has said there is "no starvation" and it is not imposing restrictions on aid entering Gaza - claims rejected by its close allies in Europe, the UN and other agencies active in the Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was "continuing the series of actions aimed at improving the humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip".It said that 90 aid packages containing food for residents in southern and northern Gaza had been airdropped in the past few hours as part of co-operation between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, France and the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry said seven more people, including a child, died of malnutrition in the territory on health ministry said the total number of malnutrition deaths since the start of the war has reached 169, including 93 on Saturday in Gaza, the health ministry said at least 83 had been killed and 1,079 injured as a result of Israel's military offensive in the past 24 Hospital in Nuseirat told the BBC it had received the bodies of three people killed by Israeli forces near an aid distribution point on Salah al-Din street, south of the Wadi Gaza area in central Gaza, run by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The hospital said at least 36 people were IDF said its troops "fired warning shots" hundreds of metres away from the aid distribution site, and not during its operating hours, after a crowd did not comply with their calls not to advance towards them "in a manner that posed a threat"."The IDF is not aware of any casualties as a result of the warning shots, and the details of the incident are still being examined," it said there was "nothing at or near our sites today". It understood that UN/World Food Programme (WFP) aid convoys were in the area of the incident, which have been drawing large crowds that have overrun and taken food off BBC has asked WFP for journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from entering Gaza independently, making it difficult to verify claims. Israel imposed a total blockade of aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March and resumed its military offensive against Hamas two weeks later, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on the group to release its remaining Israeli blockade was partially eased after 11 weeks amid warnings of a looming famine from global experts, but shortages of food, medicine and fuel remain, aid agencies have launched its offensive in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed. The Hamas-run health authorities say 60,430 people have been killed as a result of the Israeli military campaign.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
Language on immigration in UK news and politics found to have ‘shaped backlash against antiracism'
A pattern of 'hostile language' in news reports and UK parliamentary debates is more likely to describe people of colour as immigrants, or with less sympathy, researchers have found. The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust analysed more than 63m words from 52,990 news articles and 317 House of Commons debates on immigration between 2019 and the general election in July 2024. Researchers concluded that the use of language about race and immigration by media and politicians has helped shape 'the increase in reactionary politics and backlash against antiracism which has emboldened the far right in this country'. The report, A Hostile Environment: Language, Race, Surveillance and the Media is the second in a series. The first phase of the research analysed parliamentary and media reports from 2010 to 2014. It found that 'illegal' was the most commonly linked word to migrants in parliamentary debates, which the researchers said reinforced the perception of migration as inherently unlawful. The latest report found that between 2019 and 2024 'the word 'illegal' has became an even stronger word association with the terms 'migrant' and 'immigrant' in both news and parliamentary debates than it was in the 2010–14 period', which, the authors claim, 'shows that the defining characteristic of migrants has been cemented as illegality over the past decade'. The study claims that since 2014, 'hostile environment' immigration policies have worked to 'expand and normalise the surveillance state' through legislation, reporting measures and data sharing. When the researchers filtered 'words associated with immigrants' in news data by nationality, religion, ethnicity and geographical location, they found the word 'Mexican' was most strongly associated, 'typically in the context of news reports about the USA'. Referring to the second- and third-placed terms in that category, the report added that 'Chinese' and 'Indian' were also very strongly associated with 'immigrant(s)', usually when reporting about immigration 'in the UK context'. The other most commonly used signifiers of identity associated with the word 'immigrants' in news were 'Asian', 'Irish', 'Haitian', 'Muslim', 'Jewish', 'non-white', 'Venezuelan', 'Cuban' and 'African'. 'Overwhelmingly, when the UK news media represents immigrants, the image that is invoked … is of an ethnically minoritised person,' the report added. Meanwhile, in Hansard data of parliamentary debates, the top 10 words most strongly associated with migration were 'illegal', 'net', 'committee', 'act', 'bill', 'tackle', 'level', 'reduce', 'system,' and 'mass'. The report said parliamentarians 'are more likely to use humanising terms when talking about Ukrainians' – such as 'guest', 'brave', 'community' or 'diaspora'. The report claims: 'Racist discourse from the highest levels of UK society, including politicians and the media, is used to frame immigration as an existential threat to the British way of life … this works to justify ever more hostile immigration policies.' Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The report added: 'One stark example of the partnership between parliament and the news media in framing public perceptions of immigration in the UK can be found in connection with the 'stop the boats' political slogan. 'The explicit use of this slogan by rioters in the summer of 2024 on banners and in chants demonstrates that the hostile language we have identified in our analysis has emboldened sectors of the UK public to engage in racist violence. 'Throughout the 2019-24 period, news articles and political debates disseminating this kind of narrative come out in fairly close alignment with each other, both reaching their peak in 2023 and declining slightly into 2024, but with still very high levels of usage.' The Home Office has been approached for comment. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the disorder of August 2024 – which followed the Southport attack – ''highlighted the need for a new approach to community cohesion' and that a task force was developing a strategic national approach, while £1.5bn was being invested in community services in 75 areas nationwide.
