
Satellite images show impact on mosques and buildings in Pakistan after Indian strikes
Satellite images released on Thursday showed the extent of damage in Pakistan after India launched strikes in one of the worst escalations of military conflict between the two nuclear-armed powers in more than five decades.
The comparative satellite images of before and after the strikes released by Maxar Technologies showed damage to mosques and buildings in Pakistan's Punjab province.
The pictures showed the impact on the Masjid-e- Markaz Taiba religious school in the industrial town of Muridke in northeastern Punjab, 33km north of Lahore.
Damage was also seen in the aerial images from Bahawalpur in southern Punjab where the Jamia Mosque Subhal Allah complex came under attack after the precision strike.
The Indian defence ministry on Wednesday said it struck nine terrorists' hideouts in various locations of Pakistan after it blamed two terrorist organisations operating from Islamabad for the deadly attack on tourists in its side of Kashmir on 22 April.
India said "no Pakistani military facilities have been targeted" and it only hit sites "from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed".
However, Pakistan said 31 civilians, including children, were killed in the strikes that hit six locations, calling it an 'act of war'.
At least 15 civilians have been confirmed dead so far in Indian-administered Kashmir in Pakistani firing at the border.
The Indian government said the strikes launched under 'Operation Sindoor' were part of a 'commitment' to hold accountable those responsible for the attack on tourists in Pahalgam in which 26 people were killed. In the worst attack on tourists in the India-side of Kashmir, a total of 25 tourists and a Kashmiri man were killed at a tourist hotspot after several militants opened fire.
Pakistani prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said the strikes were 'unprovoked' and said the heinous act of aggression will not go unpunished".
The leader of the country denied involvement in the Pahalgam attack, saying it "wasn't related" to Pakistan, and that his country was "accused for the wrong" reasons.
The targets of the nighttime strikes, Indian officials claimed on Tuesday, were nine facilities allegedly linked to proscribed militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The deepest target in Pakistan, the Indian defence ministry said, was Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur which is 100km inside Pakistan.
India said it hit a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Muzaffarabad, 30km from the India-Pakistan border.
While Pakistan has denied claims of India striking terror camps, Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammed, said in a statement that his family members were killed in the strike.
He said his older sister and her husband, his nephew and his nephew's wife, as well as his niece and five children from his family were killed in a strike on the mosque in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
Masood Azhar, who was in Bahawalpur, is listed as a global terrorist by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and is sanctioned by countries like the US, UK, and India. He founded the Jaish-e-Mohammed after his release from an Indian prison in a deal for the release of hostages in the 1999 hijacking of I ndian Airlines flight IC-814.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Pakistan likely to hike defence spending but slash overall budget in 2025-26
ISLAMABAD, June 10 (Reuters) - Pakistan will unveil its annual federal budget for the coming fiscal year later on Tuesday, seeking to kickstart growth while finding resources for an expected hike in defence expenditure following the conflict with India last month. Islamabad will also have to contend with remaining within the discipline of its International Monetary Fund programme and the uncertainty from new trade tariffs being imposed by the United States, its biggest export market. Media reports say the government is likely to present a 17.6 trillion rupee ($62.45 billion) budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, down 6.7% from this fiscal year. It has projected a fiscal deficit of 4.8% of GDP, against a targeted 5.9% deficit in 2024-25, the reports say. Analysts said they expect an increase of around 20% in the defence budget, likely offset by cuts in development spending. Pakistan allocated 2.1 trillion Pakistani rupees($7.45 billion) for defence in the outgoing fiscal year, including $2 billion for equipment and other assets. An additional 563 billion rupees ($1.99 billion) was set aside for military pensions, which are not counted within the official defence budget. India's defence spending in its 2025–26 (April-March) fiscal year was set at $78.7 billion, a 9.5% increase from the previous year, including pensions and $21 billion earmarked for equipment. It has indicated it will step up expenditure following the May conflict with Pakistan. The government of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has projected 4.2% economic growth in 2025-26, saying it has steadied the economy, which had looked at risk of defaulting on its debts as recently as 2023. Growth this fiscal year is likely to be 2.7%, against an initial target of 3.6% set in the budget last year. Pakistan's growth lags far behind the region. In 2024, South Asian countries grew by an average of 5.8% and 6.0% growth is expected in 2025, according to the Asian Development Bank. Expansion of the economy should be aided by a sharp drop in the cost of borrowing, the government says, after a succession of interest rate cuts by the central bank. But economists warn that monetary policy alone may not be enough, with fiscal constraints and IMF-mandated reforms still weighing on investment. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said on Monday that he wanted to avoid Pakistan's boom and bust cycles of the past. 'The macroeconomic stability that we have achieved, we want to absolutely stay the course,' he said. 'This time around we are very, very clear that we do not want to squander the opportunity.' The budget is expected to prioritize expanding the tax base, enforcing agriculture income tax laws, and reducing government subsidies to industry, to meet the terms of a $7 billion IMF bailout signed last summer. Just 1.3% of the population paid income tax in 2024, according to the tax authorities, with agriculture and the retail sector largely outside of the tax net. The IMF has urged Pakistan to widen the tax base through reforms which include taxing agriculture, retail, and real estate. Ahmad Mobeen, senior economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, said that he expected the revenue target for 2025-26 will be missed. 'The shortfall will mostly be owing to lack of optimal implementation of announced measures as well as absence of meaningful structural reforms to widen the tax net in general,' said Mobeen. ($1 = 281.8400 Pakistani rupees)


BBC News
6 hours ago
- BBC News
The Documentary Podcast Assignment: Balochistan - the women of the vanished
In the last two decades thousands of men have disappeared in Balochistan, Pakistan's largest region. Activists and some of their families accuse the Pakistani authorities of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings. The government is fighting an insurgency in the region, but denies any involvement in the disappearances. It says some of the missing men have joined militant groups or have simply left the province. Mutilated bodies have continued to turn up, including in mass graves. Farhat Javed reports on Balochistan's Women of the Vanished - the mothers and daughters left behind who are still searching for their missing loved ones.


BBC News
9 hours ago
- BBC News
Indian students reconsider US plans amid visa uncertainties
When 26-year-old Umar Sofi received his acceptance letter from Columbia University's School of Journalism, he thought the hardest part of his journey was over. After trying for three years, Mr Sofi had finally been admitted to his dream university and even secured a partial scholarship. He quit his job in anticipation of the big move. But on 27 May, when the US suddenly paused student visa appointments, the ground slipped from beneath his feet."I was numb. I could not process what had happened," Mr Sofi, who lives in Indian-administered Kashmir, told the BBC. Some 2,000km (1,242 miles) away in Mumbai, 17-year-old Samita Garg (name changed on request) went through a similar ordeal. A day after she was accepted into a top US university to study biochemistry - her first step towards becoming a dermatologist - the US embassy halted student visa appointments."It is scary and stressful," Ms Garg told the BBC over the phone. "It feels like I've been left in the lurch, not knowing when this will end."Both Mr Sofi and Ms Garg now have only a few weeks to secure their visas before the academic year begins in August, but little clarity on whether they can go ahead with their plans. Last month President Donald Trump's administration asked US embassies across the world to stop scheduling appointments for student visas and expand social media vetting of wider move followed a crackdown on America's elite universities like Harvard, which Trump accused of being too liberal and of not doing enough to combat antisemitism. Trump's decisions have had far-reaching repercussions in India, which sends more international students to the US than any other country. Over the last month, the BBC spoke with at least 20 students at various stages of their application process, all of whom echoed deep anxieties about their futures. Most chose to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the US government and worried that speaking out now could hurt their chances of obtaining a visa, or renewing it. Trump's battle on international students explained... in 70 secondsStudents say they 'regret' applying to US universities after visa changesTrump suspends foreign student visas at Harvard More than 1.1 million international students were enrolled in US colleges in the 2023-24 school year, according to Open Doors, an organisation that collects data on foreign students. Nearly a third of them, or more than 330,000, were from consultants report that applications to US universities for the upcoming autumn semester have dropped by at least 30% because of the uncertainty. "Their biggest fear is safety - what if their visas are rejected or they're deported mid-term?" said Nikhil Chopra, founder of TC Global, an international education say many students are now either deferring their plans or switching to countries perceived to be more "stable" like the UK, Germany, Ireland and Australia. Prema Unni (name changed on request) was accepted into three US universities for a master's in data analytics. But instead of preparing for the move, he decided to forgo the opportunity altogether."There's uncertainty at every step - first the visa, then restrictions on internships and part-time work, and the constant surveillance while on campus," Mr Unni said. "It is very stressful."The halt on visa interviews is the latest in a series of policies tightening immigration rules for students. A few weeks ago, the US warned that students who drop out or miss classes without proper notification risk having their visas revoked, and could be barred from future decisions have come around the time of the year when 70% of student visas are issued, or renewed, sparking great unease among Indian students. "No student wants to go to a country and then have the visa policy suddenly change," Chris R Glass, a professor at Boston College told the BBC. "They need stability and options." The uncertainty will have long-term consequences - both for the aspirations of Indian students, but also for the US's future as a coveted higher education hub - says Prof Glass. Foreign student enrolment in US universities was slowing even before Trump's latest salvo. According to The Indian Express newspaper, the US denied 41% of student visa applications between the fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the highest rejection rate in a decade, and nearly doubling from from Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems (SEVIS), which tracks foreign students' compliance with their visas, showed a nearly 10% drop in international student enrolments as of March this year compared with the same period in 2024. International students are a financial lifeline for many US colleges, especially regional and state universities offering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and other master's programmes. These students pay significantly higher tuition fees than US citizens. In the 2023–24 academic year alone, foreign students contributed $43.8bn to the US economy, according to Nafsa, an association of International educators. They also supported over 375,000 jobs. "This really isn't about a short-term disruption of tuition revenue. This is about a long-term rupture in a strategic relationship that benefits both countries," Prof Glass said. For decades the brightest Indian students have depended on an American education in the absence of top quality Indian universities or a supportive research ecosystem. In turn they've helped plug a skills gap in the US. Many land highly sought-after jobs after they finish their courses - in particular, representing a significant pool of skilled professionals in sectors like biotechnology, healthcare and data science - and have even gone on to lead iconic companies. Everyone from Google's Sunder Pichai to Microsoft's Satya Nadella went to the US as students. While this has often led to concerns of a "brain-drain" from India, experts point out that India is simply unable to solve the problem of quality and quantity higher education in the immediate future to provide a domestic alternative to these say it will be a lose-lose situation for both countries, unless the cloud of uncertainty lifts soon. Additional reporting by Divya Uppal, BBC India's YouTube team, in Delhi. Follow BBC News India on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.