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School playing fields in Pakistan’s Kashmir are being transformed into first aid camps for children to learn how to respond if war breaks out with India.Wearing a protective helmet and a fluorescent vest, 13-year-old Konain Bibi listened attentively to her first aid lesson. “With India threatening us, there’s a possibility of war, so we’ll all have to support each other,” she told AFP.Pakistan’s government has warned that it has “credible intelligence” that India was planning an imminent military strike.Already frosty relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have plummeted since a deadly assault on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir last week.India blames Pakistan for the gun attack that killed 26 people on April 22, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi giving his military “complete operational freedom”, although Islamabad has denied any involvement.Muslim-majority Kashmir, a region of around 15 million people, is claimed in full by both Islamabad and New Delhi but is divided between them.There are more than 6,000 schools, colleges and universities on the Pakistan side of the border — including 1,195 along the Line of Control (LoC), the heavily militarised de facto border separating the disputed territory.Local authorities launched first aid training this week, teaching students how to jump out of a window, use an inflatable evacuation slide, or carry an injured person.- ‘Come straight home’  -Pakistan and India have exchanged fire at the border for several nights in a row, breaking a ceasefire agreement.In Muzaffarabad, the largest city in Pakistani Kashmir, training sessions have already taken place in 13 schools, according to emergency workers.”In an emergency, schools are the first to be affected, which is why we are starting evacuation training with schoolchildren,” Abdul Basit Moughal, a trainer from Pakistan’s Civil Defence directorate, told AFP.The agency will deploy its rescue workers to schools bordering the LoC in the coming days.”We’re learning to help our friends and provide first aid in case India attacks us,” said 12-year-old Faizan Ahmed as students watched an instructor handle a fire extinguisher.Eleven-year-old Ali Raza added: “We have learned how to dress a wounded person, how to carry someone on a stretcher and how to put out a fire.”About 1.5 million people live near the Line of Control on the Pakistani side, where residents were preparing for violence by readying simple, mud-walled underground bunkers reinforced with concrete if they could afford it. In Chakothi village, about three kilometres (two miles) from the Line of Control, there are around 30 bunkers for a community of 60 families overlooked by Indian army check posts atop the surrounding green mountains.”For a week we are living under constant fear,” said Iftikhar Ahmad Mir, a 44-year-old shopkeeper in Chakothi.”We are extremely worried about their safety on the way to school because the area was targeted by the Indian army in the past,” he said of the village’s children.”We make sure they don’t roam around after finishing their school and come straight home.”

India will conduct its first official caste census since independence, the government announced on Wednesday, a move likely to have far-reaching consequences for its politics and contentious affirmative action policies.Caste remains a crucial determinant of one’s station in life in India, with higher castes the beneficiaries of ingrained cultural privileges and lower castes suffering entrenched discrimination — and a rigid divide between both.More than two-thirds of India’s 1.4 billion people are estimated to be on the lower rungs of a millennia-old social hierarchy that divides Hindus by function and social standing.The decision to include detailed caste data as part of the next census — originally due in 2021 but yet to take place — was approved by a government meeting headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “The Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs has decided today that caste enumeration should be included in the forthcoming census,” government spokesman Ashwini Vaishnav told reporters.”This demonstrates that a government is committed to the values and interests of a society and country.”No date has been announced for the next census.Amit Shah, India’s interior minister, called the move “historic”. “This decision will empower all economically and socially backward sections,” he said in a statement. – Support from opposition leader -Caste data was last collected as part of the official census exercise in 1931, during British colonial rule that ended with Indian independence 16 years later. Successive governments have since resisted updating the sensitive demographic data, citing administrative complexity and fears of social unrest. A caste survey was conducted in 2011 but its results were never made public because they were purportedly inaccurate.That survey was separate from the 2011 general census, the last time the world’s most populous nation collected demographic data.Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has in the past opposed the idea of enumerating people by caste, arguing it would deepen social divisions.Proponents say detailed demographic information is crucial for targeted implementation of India’s social justice programmes, including earmarking nearly half of all university seats and government jobs for socially disadvantaged communities. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi — a strong advocate of the idea — said he “welcomed” the move. “We see the caste census as a new paradigm of development,” Gandhi told reporters. “We are going to push this paradigm one way or the other.”Modi himself belongs to a low caste and has in the past said he wants to improve the living standards of all irrespective of birth status, saying that for him, the four biggest “castes” were the poor, youth, women and farmers.

Pakistan said on Wednesday it had “credible intelligence” that India was planning an imminent military strike and vowed to retaliate, as the United States appeals to both sides to de-escalate after a deadly attack in Kashmir.Already frosty relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have plummeted further since New Delhi blamed its arch-rival Pakistan for last week’s assault on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, the deadliest attack on civilians there in a quarter of a century.Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the military “complete operational freedom” to respond to the attack during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, a senior government source told AFP.Pakistan’s government has denied any involvement in the shooting and vowed that “any act of aggression will be met with a decisive response”.”Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends to launch a military strike within the next 24 to 36 hours using the Pahalgam incident as a false pretext,” information minister Attaullah Tarar said in a statement early on Wednesday.However, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar also said Pakistan would not strike first.Later in the day, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif issued a statement saying he had protested “India’s escalatory and provocative behaviour” in a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.Rubio, in a US readout of the call, told Sharif of the “need to condemn the terror attack” in Kashmir.Rubio “urged Pakistani officials’ cooperation in investigating this unconscionable attack,” State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said.The United States has close relations with India and has voiced solidarity.But Rubio, in a telephone call with India’s top diplomat Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, also “encouraged India to work with Pakistan to de-escalate tensions and maintain peace and security in South Asia,” Bruce said.In a sign of mounting tensions, New Delhi on Wednesday closed its airspace to Pakistani airplanes, after Islamabad banned Indian planes from overflying, in the latest tit-for-tat measure.Muslim-majority Kashmir, a region of around 15 million people, is divided but claimed in full between Pakistan and India which have fought three full-fledged wars since their separation at birth in 1947. About 1.5 million people live near the ceasefire line on the Pakistani side of the border, where residents were preparing for violence by readying simple, mud-walled underground bunkers reinforced with concrete if they could afford it. “We are cleaning the bunker to ensure that if the enemy attacks at any time, we are not caught off guard and we can bring our children to safety,” 42-year-old Muhammad Javed told AFP in the village of Chakothi.- De-escalation calls -Both sides said on Wednesday they had repeatedly traded gunfire for a sixth straight night across the Line of Control (LoC), a heavily fortified zone of high-altitude Himalayan outposts that represents the de facto Kashmir border.Another Pakistani security source told AFP that two drones were shot down on Tuesday near the LoC “after violating our airspace”. The two sides discussed the violations in a weekly call on Tuesday, the country’s army spokesman Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told a press conference on Wednesday, adding that the details of the routine call are not usually made public.A defence source in India confirmed the director generals of military operations in both countries talked over a hotline.Since the Pahalgam attack there have been tit-for-tat diplomatic barbs, expulsion of citizens and border crossings shut.Modi vowed last week to pursue those who carried out the attack and those who had supported it.”We will pursue them to the ends of the Earth,” he said.- Wanted posters -Rebels in the Indian-run area of Kashmir have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the Kashmir attack — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.They have announced a two million rupee ($23,500) bounty for information leading to each man’s arrest and carried out sweeping detentions seeking anyone suspected of links to the alleged killers.The worst attack in recent years in Indian-run Kashmir was at Pulwama in 2019, when a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a security forces convoy, killing 40 and wounding 35.Indian fighter jets carried out air strikes on Pakistani territory 12 days later.burs-pjm/ecl/md-sct/md/jgc

A hat-trick by Yuzvendra Chahal and skipper Shreyas Iyer’s 72 helped Punjab Kings to a four-wicket win over Chennai Super Kings on Wednesday, officially ending their opponents’ slim chances of reaching the playoffs.Five-time champions Chennai made 190 all out after England’s Sam Curran scored 88 off 47 balls but Punjab overhauled the total with two balls to spare.Iyer stood tall with his 41-ball knock and put on a second-wicket partnership of 72 with impact substitute Prabhsimran Singh, who made 54.”I love chasing on any field,” said player of the match Iyer.”I feel like I thrive whenever there is a big total on the board and you need to take the charge and momentum for the team for the rest of the batters to come and go full throttle.”Punjab climbed to second in the 10-team table as they hunt for a first IPL title.The top four teams reach the play-offs, but bottom side CSK are already out of contention after suffering an eighth defeat in 10 matches.Punjab were cruising to victory despite losing Prabhsimran and then Nehal Wadhera to fall to 136-3 in the 15th over.Iyer picked up the pace alongside Shashank Singh, who made 23.But the Kings stuttered late on after Iyer was bowled by Sri Lanka bowler Matheesha Pathirana to leave three required from eight balls.The dismissal of Suryansh Shedge with one needed in the final over, followed by a dot ball, created some late excitement at Chepauk stadium, but Marco Jansen inside edged Khaleel Ahmed for a boundary to seal his team’s sixth victory of the campaign.Leg-spinner Chahal’s four wickets in the penultimate over of CSK’s innings — including the IPL’s first hat-trick since 2023 — proved crucial as the hosts were bowled out in 19.2 overs.Earlier, Chennai lost three early wickets, including Ravindra Jadeja for 17 in the sixth over, before Curran and Dewald Brevis, who hit 32, put on 78 runs for the fourth wicket.”it was the first time we put enough runs on the board,” said skipper M.S. Dhoni.”But was it a par score? I feel slightly short. Yes, a bit demanding from the batters but I feel we could’ve got slightly more.”Afghanistan all-rounder Azmatullah Omarzai broke the stand by bowling Brevis before Curran reached his fifty.Curran’s score was the highest by any Chennai batter this season as the England all-rounder hit nine fours and four sixes.He was finally dismissed by South African left-arm quick Jansen before Chahal took centre stage.Chahal sent back the 43-year-old Dhoni after being hit for a six by the Chennai captain.The India international then took the wickets of Deepak Hooda, Anshul Kamboj and Noor Ahmad to claim his second and the 23rd IPL hat-trick since its inaugural season in 2008.

Climate change, women’s rights, displacement, poverty: Afghanistan remains a priority as it faces overlapping crises, the UN’s relief chief Tom Fletcher told AFP on Wednesday, deploring “brutal” aid budget cuts. “We’ve identified 17 crises across the world where our engagement is most urgent, most vital. Afghanistan is high on that list,” said the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs in an interview with AFP during a visit to northern Afghanistan’s Kunduz province. Fletcher’s visit comes after US President Donald Trump’s decision to slash foreign aid sent shock waves across the globe. Washington had been the top donor to Afghanistan, having spent $3.71 billion in humanitarian and development aid since the Taliban returned to power in 2021 and imposed a severe interpretation of Islamic law. “We’re in a period when we’re having to massively prioritise, take brutal choices… literally life and death choices, about where to operate and which lives to save,” Fletcher said. “You can look at Sudan for the scale of the crisis, you can look at Gaza for the intensity, the ferocity of the killing there,” he added. “Afghanistan is a different kind of challenge but it’s a huge challenge nonetheless.” Climate change is hitting the Central Asian country “particularly hard” and it “will drive the needs even more than conflict will in the period ahead”, he said. “You’ve got that combined with the existing levels of poverty and these decades of instability and conflict.” – ‘Dialogue’ on women’s rights -The situation of women’s rights in the country adds to the layers of a “building up of crisis upon crisis”, Fletcher added. The Taliban authorities have imposed restrictions on women that the UN has denounced as “gender apartheid”. Women and girls have been banned from education beyond primary school as well as many sectors of work and public spaces.  “I think this particular dynamic around women and girls is something that can surely cut through to even the most hard-hearted and cynical transactional politician right now,” Fletcher said. After meetings with Taliban officials this week in the capital Kabul and the Taliban heartland of southern Kandahar, Fletcher noted the need for “dialogue in order to try and change the mindset” on women’s rights. “It’s encouraging to me that people were willing to have the conversation and not have it in a purely defensive way,” he said. Afghan women are particularly affected by humanitarian aid cuts, especially in the health care sector, which has been heavily dependent on foreign support. In Afghanistan, maternal mortality rates of 620 per 100,000 births and infant mortality rates of 55 children under five per 1,000 births are among the highest in the world, according to UNICEF. “I challenge anyone who celebrates aid cuts to sit with a woman who has lost her child because she had to cycle for three hours while in labour to get the care that she needed,” said Fletcher, after having met Afghan women at a mobile health centre. – ‘Humanitarian reset’ -When Amina, a 28-year-old housewife, fell ill, she walked for an hour and a half to reach the centre in the rural countryside.”There are no clinics, no doctors who come here, nothing nearby. We don’t even have electricity,” she told AFP. The small facility, supported by the local non-governmental organisation JACK and UN agencies, is under strain. Already overwhelmed, it now has to accommodate patients from US-funded clinics that had to close, as well as Afghans who have been expelled from neighbouring Pakistan since early April. “The reality with the cuts was that we didn’t see the impact straight away,” Fletcher said.”It’s now that we’re really coming to understand how brutal these cuts are going to be.” Under these conditions, he said, “we’re in the process now of a massive humanitarian reset”.”We’ve got to rediscover that sense of coexistence and care for the most vulnerable people on the planet. I don’t think that’s gone away just because of a few election results,” he said. “I don’t think you can put tariffs on humanitarian action,” he added, referring to the trade war recently launched by Trump.

Bangladesh won the second and final Test against Zimbabwe by an innings and 106 runs on Wednesday, a decisive victory in less than three days to level the series. Zimbabwe scored 227 in their first innings after winning the toss, with Bangladesh scoring a formidable 444 in response.  The visitors then collapsed for 111 in the second session of the third day in Chattogram.Mehidy Hasan Miraz starred with both bat and ball, scoring a century and then bagging 5-32 with the ball to hand Zimbabwe a crushing defeat.  It was the all-rounder’s third five-wicket haul of the series after five in each innings of the Sylhet Test.His spin-bowling partner Taijul Islam bagged 3-42 for nine wickets in the match. Ben Curran was the only batsman to offer some resistance, scoring 46 off 103 balls in an innings laced with five boundaries.Craig Ervine (25) and Wellington Masakadza (10) were the only other Zimbabweans to reach double digits in the second innings.  Shadman Islam earlier top-scored for Bangladesh with 120 to power the hosts to an imposing total.  Leg-spinner Vincent Masekesa was the most successful among the Zimbabwe bowlers with 5-115, in the process becoming Zimbabwe’s third cricketer to take five wickets on debut after Andy Blignaut and John Nyumbu. However, his efforts could not stop Bangladesh running away with the match.  Bangladesh added 153 more to their overnight total of 291, with Mehidy assisted by tailenders Taijul (20 off 45) and Tanzim Hasan Sakib (41 off 80). It was Zimbabwe’s second successive defeat at the spin-friendly venue and the second time that Bangladesh have defeated Zimbabwe by an innings.The margin of their first defeat of that magnitude, in Dhaka in 2020, was identical: an innings and 106 runs.Brief score: Zimbabwe: 227 (Sean Williams 67, Nick Welch 54; Taijul Islam 6-60) and 111 (Ben Curran 46; Mehidy Hasan Miraz 5-32)Bangladesh: 444 (Shadman Islam 120, Mehidy Hasan Miraz 104; Vincent Masekesa 5-115)Toss: ZimbabweResult: Bangladesh won by an innings and 106 runs. 

Slain Kashmiri Muslim horseman Syed Adil Shah’s grieving family say they are proud of his “sacrifice” after he wrestled with a gunman as he tried to save tourists in last week’s attack.Shah, 30, had taken visitors on his pony up to the meadows near Pahalgam, a lush green field nestled beneath snow-capped Himalayan peaks on April 22 when gunmen emerged from the treelines.Holidaymakers were enjoying the tranquil meadows when at least three gunmen, still at large despite a massive manhunt, raked the crowds with automatic gunfire, killing 26 men including Shah.”He showed his humanity and that allows us to live on,” his inconsolable father Syed Haidar Shah said from their modest home nestled on wooded slopes.”He sacrificed his own life while trying to save innocent visitors.”Shah was the only Kashmiri killed in the attack. All of the dead were Indians, except for one tourist from neighbouring Nepal, and most were Hindus.It was the worst attack on civilians for a quarter of a century in Muslim-majority Kashmir, for decades a touchstone for conflict between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan who both claim the region.Survivors said the gunmen separated the men, asked several about their religion, and shot them at close range.They also reported that the gunmen ordered some of the men to recite the Muslim declaration of faith.Those who could not were shot.”He left home that morning after three days of rain to take tourists around on his pony as usual,” Syed Haidar Shah said. “Who knew that this was the last time?”- ‘I am proud of my son’ -Indian police say the gunmen are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, and two are Pakistani citizens.Pakistan has denied any role in the Pahalgam attack and responded to India’s punitive diplomatic sanctions — including withdrawing visas and closing the main border — with tit-for-tat restrictions.Bellicose statements have prompted worries of a spiral into military action, with calls from several nations for restraint.Indians from Kashmir have reported harassment and intimidation in the wake of the attack.However, commentators such as Shashi Tharoor, writing in the Indian Express, pointed to the “heroism” of Kashmiris such as Shah — and others who helped in the aftermath — and said their courage should be an opportunity to build “national unity”, not division.Shah’s brother, Naushad Hussain, described his horror at hearing reports of the shooting. He set off for the nearest hospital fearing the worst after Shah did not answer his telephone.”Many injured and dead people were being brought to Pahalgam hospital, but I was not allowed to go in to look for my brother,” Hussain said, speaking in their home village of Hapatnar.”One Indian tourist, a woman outside the hospital, told me she was saved by a local ponyman when her husband was killed,” Hussain said.”She said the local man was shot while trying to hold the attacker back.”It was only hours later, after following ambulances carrying the dead to the main city of Srinagar, that he discovered that the dead ponyman was his brother Shah.”There, I saw my brother’s body lying on a stretcher with his shirt torn,” Hussain said.He said he could see “three bullet wounds on his body, one across his neck and two on his upper chest.”Hussain said he also saw marks on his brother’s body.”I could see bruises on his left arm and wrists, which to me clearly indicated he had fought with the attacker,” he said.His father said his son had a very “sharp sense of right and wrong”.”We are not alone in our grief,” Shah senior said. “There are 25 other families, but I am proud of what my son did”.

Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan have exchanged gunfire across their heavily militarised de facto border in contested Kashmir since an April 22 attack that New Delhi blames on Islamabad, claims it rejects.Troops are facing off along the 770-kilometre (478-mile) fortified Line of Control — the route of a ceasefire line dating back to 1949 — which ranges from icy outposts in high-altitude Himalayan mountains down to greener foothills in the south.India and Pakistan have fought over the Muslim-majority region since their partition at the end of British rule in 1947.Insurgents in Indian-run Kashmir have battled since 1989 seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.Both countries trade accusations of arming groups in each other’s territory to cause instability.India, a Hindu majority nation with 1.4 billion people, and Pakistan, a Muslim-majority nation with 240 million citizens, both have nuclear weapons, and their militaries are among the largest in the world.Pakistan’s main weapons supplier is China, Islamabad’s closest regional ally, as well getting drones from Turkey.Although India’s military strength is much larger, Pakistani analysts point to Islamabad’s decades of experience fighting insurgencies on its border with Afghanistan.India is the world’s largest arms importer, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).The bulk of India’s supplies come from Russia. New Delhi has also expanded military suppliers to include the United States, France and Israel, as well as developing its domestic production, including of aircraft carriers, submarines and helicopters.Both sides have boosted their military capabilities since 2019, when India launched air strikes on Pakistan following an attack by a suicide bomber on Indian forces in Kashmir.Here, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance database, are their estimated forces.- Pakistan – Military hardware and personnel: Active military:          660,000Paramilitary police:      291,000Defence budget:           $10 billion (2025)Nuclear capabilities: Islamabad has both land-based and air-delivered weapons, with medium-, short- and close-range ballistic missiles. Islamabad has sought submarine-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles.Fixed wing aircraft:         812Rotary-wing (helicopters):   322Armoured fighting vehicles:  6,137Artillery:                   4,619- India – Military hardware and personnel: Active military:          1,475,000Paramilitary police:      1,616,000Defence budget:           $81 billion (2025)Nuclear capabilities: primarily land-based, but may be able to deliver bombs from the air, and is developing its submarine force. It has intermediate-range ballistic missiles, and are testing an intercontinental-range version.Fixed wing aircraft:           1,437Rotary-wing (helicopters):       995Armoured fighting vehicle:     7,074Artillery:                     11,225bb-jma-ecl-pjm/rsc

A fierce fire ripped through a hotel in the Indian city of Kolkata killing at least 15 people, police said Wednesday, with some clambering out of windows and onto the rooftop to escape.Several people were rescued from rooms and the roof of the budget hotel, Kolkata police chief Manoj Verma told AFP after the fire broke out on Tuesday evening.”The hotel turned into a gas chamber and it appears that many people suffocated to death,” said Verma, adding an investigation had been launched to determine the cause of the blaze.The Rituraj Hotel, which had 88 guests when the fire broke out, is located in a congested business district of central Kolkata.About a dozen people were burned and were undergoing treatment.A hotel worker told AFP that the fire broke out on the first floor of the six-storey building, where a bar was being built and where construction work had bricked up the windows.Building fires are common in India due to a lack of firefighting equipment and a routine disregard for safety regulations.Eyewitness Nanda Mondal, who runs a construction company, said he saw plastic panels covering the building that appeared to have “fuelled the fire”.”A man died after he tried to climb down a rainwater pipe,” said Mondal, 64.- ‘Negligence’ -The Press Trust of India news agency, which filmed images of soaring flames from the Kolkata building, reported that “several people were seen trying to escape through the windows and narrow ledges of the building”.Kolkata’s The Telegraph newspaper reported that at least one person died when he “jumped off the terrace trying to escape” the fire.Verma said the fire had been tackled and that “cooling operations are underway”.Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences to the families of those killed.”May the injured recover soon,” his office said in a statement.Kolkata, a bustling metropolis of more than 15 million people, is the capital of West Bengal state, which is governed by the opposition Trinamool Congress party.Sajal Ghosh, a city councillor who belongs to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — which is in power nationally — said the fire seemed to have been a result of “negligence”.”It has also raised fresh questions about illegal constructions and safety standards in poorly regulated budget hotels in the city,” he said.

Pakistan said on Wednesday it had “credible intelligence” that India was planning an imminent military strike and vowed to retaliate, as worries of spiralling conflict grew over a deadly attack in Kashmir.Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours have plummeted since New Delhi blamed its arch-rival Pakistan for last week’s assault on tourists in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, the deadliest attack on civilians there in a quarter of a century.Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the military “complete operational freedom” to respond to the attack during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, a senior government source told AFP.Pakistan’s government has denied any involvement in the shooting, and information minister Attaullah Tarar said overnight that “any act of aggression will be met with a decisive response”.”Pakistan has credible intelligence that India intends to launch a military strike within the next 24 to 36 hours using the Pahalgam incident as a false pretext,” Tarar said in a statement early on Wednesday.However, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar also said Pakistan would not strike first.Leaders around the world have expressed deep concerns and urged restraint by the uneasy neighbours who have fought several wars.Muslim-majority Kashmir, a region of around 15 million people, is divided between Pakistan and India but claimed in full by both nations. About 1.5 million people live near the ceasefire line on the Pakistani side of the border, where residents were preparing for violence by readying simple, mud-walled underground bunkers reinforced with concrete if they can afford it. “We are cleaning the bunker to ensure that if the enemy attacks at any time, we are not caught off guard and we can bring our children to safety,” 42-year-old Muhammad Javed told AFP in the village of Chakothi.- De-escalation calls -India’s army said on Wednesday it had repeatedly traded gunfire with Pakistani troops for a sixth straight night across the Line of Control (LoC), a heavily fortified zone of high-altitude Himalayan outposts that represents the de facto Kashmir border.A Pakistani security source told AFP that two drones were shot down on Tuesday near the LoC “after violating our airspace”. Tensions have been rapidly mounting in the week since the Pahalgam attack, with tit-for-tat diplomatic barbs, expulsion of citizens and border crossings shut.Modi vowed last week to pursue those who carried out the attack and those who had supported it.”I say to the whole world: India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backer,” he said on Thursday.”We will pursue them to the ends of the Earth”.The bellicose statements have prompted worries of a spiral into military action, with calls for restraint from several nations.The US State Department said top diplomat Marco Rubio would call his Pakistani and Indian counterparts soon to urge them “to not escalate the situation”.UN chief Antonio Guterres held calls on Tuesday with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in which he “offered his Good Offices to support de-escalation”, his spokesman said in a statement.Sharif’s office said later he had urged Guterres to “counsel India” to exercise restraint, while pledging to defend Pakistan’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity with full force in case of any misadventure by India”.- Wanted posters -India and Pakistan have fought over the former princely state since their independence from British rule in 1947, with the border splitting generations of families.Rebels in the Indian-run area have waged an insurgency since 1989, seeking independence or a merger with Pakistan.Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the Kashmir attack — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.They have announced a two million rupee ($23,500) bounty for information leading to each man’s arrest and carried out sweeping detentions seeking anyone suspected of links to the alleged killers.The worst attack in recent years in Indian-run Kashmir was at Pulwama in 2019, when a suicide bomber rammed a car packed with explosives into a security forces convoy, killing 40 and wounding 35.Indian fighter jets carried out air strikes on Pakistani territory 12 days later.burs-pjm/ecl/pbt