Latest news with #Jhelum
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Bradford Hospitals team supports Khadeejah Children's Care Centre
A hospital team in Bradford has donated old orthotic equipment to a centre in Pakistan. Orthotics clinical lead, Lisa Buckley, and orthotist, Biko Bourgeois, were inspired to donate old orthotic equipment to the Khadeejah Children's Care Centre in Jhelum, Pakistan, which supports children with physical disabilities, after a chance meeting with a patient. Ms Buckley said: "I first became aware of the Khadeejah Children's Care Centre in August 2024, when Khadeejah, seven, and her parents attended an appointment with me. "Khadeejah has some very complex needs and has been under the care of orthotics for several years. "Her parents mentioned that they had opened a centre in Jhelum (where her family is from), to cater for children like Khadeejah with disabilities who otherwise would not be able to access such a service due to poverty and distance. "The centre also provides respite to families and siblings." Khadeejah's parents, who live in BD5, asked Ms Buckley if there were any old orthotics that could be donated to the centre. Amir Idris, Khadeejah's father, said: "The centre is entirely funded by our family, so any help with donations of equipment is appreciated, as costing of supplies adds to the overall expense. "The quality of equipment and orthotics is also not on par with what we find here in the UK and is of very low quality in Pakistan. "We opened the centre because the village has a high number of children with cerebral palsy, and of the roughly 174 disabled children currently registered, the vast majority have physical disabilities caused by cerebral palsy. "We have now had to cap the number of children that we can help to 100, due to reaching capacity, and currently the remaining 74 are on a waiting list. "These children have benefited massively from the in-house physiotherapy team and the orthotics team that comes in from Lahore once a month." Ms Buckley added: "So far we have donated footwear, arm, ankle, hand, and feet supports, and anything else that is in a good, clean, useable condition. "Biko and I are extremely passionate about our work, and knowing our donations are making such a difference to other children's lives is amazing." Khadeejah's father thanked Ms Buckley and Mr Bourgeois for their help and said that the donations would make "a life-changing difference." More information about the Khadeejah Children's Care Centre is available at
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Who suffered the most?': Fear and fatigue in Kashmir after ceasefire
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.'
Al Jazeera
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
‘We want a permanent solution': Fear and fatigue in Kashmir after ceasefire
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.'
The National
10-05-2025
- The National
India-Pakistan ceasefire: Passengers hopeful flights will operate as Islamabad reopens air space
Travellers whose plans had been disrupted by the escalating dispute between India and Pakistan were given hope on Saturday after a ceasefire announcement was followed by Islamabad's airport authority reopening Pakistani air space. The two nuclear powers had been exchanging deadly air force, missile, drone and artillery attacks, which had forced the cancellation of many international flights, including to and from the UAE's hubs in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. 'All airports across the country are now available for regular flight operations," Pakistan's airports authority announced minutes after the ceasefire announcement. Before this, Pakistan had closed its airspace for all flights until noon Sunday. India also announced the closure of 32 airports in the northern and western parts of the country, and suspended 25 air route segments until May 15. No announcements have yet been made by international airlines on the resumption of flights to India and Pakistan. Mohammad Ali, a resident of Jhelum, in Pakistan's Punjab, was on his way to Islamabad when the news of the truce broke. He was going there with his family, who live in Abu Dhabi, to get closer to the airport once flights resume and to escape shelling that happened nearby. "All the houses near the river [in Jhelum] were on high-alert," he told The National. "We had to leave the hometown for safety reasons." But with the expectation that many are in a position similar to his, Mr Ali did not make his way to the airport to buy tickets. "Thousands want to leave the country. Finding tickets would be impossible," he said. Social media was also buzzing with the news with people celebrating the announcement. Prior to the ceasefire announcement, Etihad Airways said it had cancelled selected flights to and from Pakistan on Thursday "due to the continued closure of Pakistani airspace". The airline said flights EY296 and EY297 between Abu Dhabi and Karachi were still scheduled to go ahead as planned, subject to airspace availability. However, the airline said that services EY300 / EY301 between Abu Dhabi and Islamabad, EY288 / EY289 between Abu Dhabi and Lahore, EY294 / EY295 between Abu Dhabi and Karachi, EY302 / EY303 between Abu Dhabi and Islamabad as well as EY284 / EY285 between Abu Dhabi and Lahore were all cancelled on Thursday. "This remains an evolving situation, and further changes or disruptions may occur. Etihad continues to monitor developments closely in co-ordination with the relevant authorities," read a statement from the airline. "The safety of our guests and crew remains our highest priority, and we regret any inconvenience caused." Emirates had suspended all flights to Pakistan until Saturday. "Emirates is suspending flight operations to all points in Pakistan until May 10, due to ongoing uncertainly surrounding access to the country's airspace and airports," read a statement on the airline's website posted prior to the ceasefire. "We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers. We are monitoring the situation closely and will post any operational updates on our website." Customers can check the latest travel information by visiting the flight status page. Flydubai said flights FZ391/392 to and from Faisalabad, FZ325/326 to and from Multan and FZ315/316 to and from Sialkot airports were running on Thursday. However, the airline said its remaining flights to Faisalabad, Karachi, Lahore, Multan, Sialkot and Quetta were cancelled on Thursday and Friday. 'We will continue to monitor the situation closely and amend our flight schedule accordingly,' said an airline representative. 'The safety of our passengers and crew is our priority. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to our passengers' travel schedules.' Along with Etihad and Qatar, Emirates was among those to halt flights on Wednesday from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha to airports in northern India and Pakistan.
