Drones in the sky, blasts outside, Kashmir was on edge as Valley came under Pakistan fire

At first, she thought it was an earthquake. The house was shaking. But within a split second, there was a loud bang. “It just felt as if some huge plane had crashed down from the sky with an earth-shaking thud,” recalled Zoya Khan*, a mother of two young children from Srinagar’s uptown locality. “I just rushed out of my bed along with my kids.”

Around 5.45 am on Saturday, most of the residents in Srinagar and adjoining areas were jolted out of their sleep by a series of loud blasts.

Khan, who lives barely 10 km from the Srinagar international airport, said she also heard the hovering noise of jets. “Last night, when there was a drone attack, the sounds were low,” she said. “But today’s blasts were terrifying.”

Ever since India targeted alleged terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir on May 7, Pakistan retaliated with a series of drone attacks along India’s western border. On Saturday at 5.25 pm, US President Donald Trump claimed that both sides had agreed to a ceasefire.

Besides intense cross-border shelling along the Line of Control and the international border, Pakistan’s response in the last two days also penetrated deep into the Kashmir Valley – a departure from its...

Read more

News