India, Pakistan agree to full and immediate ceasefire
Soldiers take security measures near the damaged mosque situated at health and education complex which was hit by Indian strike in Muridke, near Lahore, Pakistan, on May 07, 2025 (Photo by Muhammed Ali/Anadolu via Getty Images).
(LONDON) — India and Pakistan have agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire, ending tensions that had been rising since an April attack on Indian-controlled Kashmir, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar.
Officials from India also confirmed that the country agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire.
President Donald Trump first announced the ceasefire in a post on social media.
“After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE. Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed in a statement that over the past two days, Vice President JD Vance and he conversed with Indian and Pakistani officials to broker an immediate ceasefire.
“We commend Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif on their wisdom, prudence, and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace,” Rubio said in a statement.
Earlier Saturday, Indian officials said during a press briefing that Pakistan had attacked 26 locations across India and the Pakistani military had begun moving its troops “into forward areas.”
“I have said on numerous earlier occasions, it is Pakistani actions that have constituted provocations and escalations,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said. “In response, India has defended and reacted in a responsible and measured fashion to these provocations and escalations by the Pakistani side. Earlier this morning, we saw a repeat of this escalatory and provocative pattern.”
Indian Army Col. Sofiya Qureshi said the forward movements of Pakistani troops indicate “offensive intent to further escalate the situation.”
“Indian armed forces remain in a high state of operational readiness,” Qureshi said. “All hostile actions have been effectively countered and responded appropriately. Indian armed forces reiterate their commitment to non-escalation, provided it is reciprocated by the Pakistan military.”
Indian Air Force Wing Commander Vyomika Singh denied that Pakistani strikes have caused any damage to India’s military infrastructure.
“Pakistan has also attempted to execute a continued malicious misinformation campaign, with claims of destruction of the Indian S-400 system at Adampur, destruction of airfields at Surat and Sirsa, Brahmos space at Nagrota, artillery gun positions in Derangyari and Chandigarh ammunitions depot, with heavy damage to other military stations being propagated on social media,” Singh said. “India unequivocally rejects these false claims being spread by Pakistan.”
India and Pakistan have exchanged cross-border fire and strikes for the past several days, with civilian casualties reported on both sides.
Tensions have been rising between the nuclear-armed neighbors since the April 22 attack on Hindu tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir, which India blamed on Pakistani-backed militants. In response, India on Wednesday launched strikes on both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir targeting what it called “terrorist infrastructure.”
Pakistan has denied any involvement in last month’s attack and said it is conducting retaliatory strikes on India and Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Thousands of Palestinians displaced by Israel continue to return to their lands in the north from the south with their vehicles in Gaza on January 29, 2025. (Photo by Moiz Salhi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — In mid-January, when two U.S.-based contracting firms tapped to secure a critical vehicle checkpoint in Gaza scrambled to sign up more than a hundred ex-military operators, the packing list for prospective hires included two types of assault rifles, Glock pistols, and knives, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.
It said nothing of citrus fruits.
But from late January until mid-March, when the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal fell apart, the ex-military and intelligence officials found that humanitarian aid measures played a crucial role in ensuring their safety in one of the Middle East’s most dangerous corridors, said one of the former officials who asked not to be named.
“We observed firsthand the desperation of some of the folks coming through,” the official told ABC News. “So the oranges and water were a hit.”
The two U.S.-based private security companies, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, were hired earlier this year by a multinational consortium of states involved in negotiating the ceasefire — including the United States, Qatar and Egypt — to ferry tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians back to a decimated northern Gaza, without allowing the movement of weapons.
The contractors, comprised of former Special Forces personnel, diplomats, and intelligence officers, did not face any notable confrontations or threats of violence over the course of two months on the ground in Gaza, the official said, and only confiscated a smattering of small weapons during vehicle searches.
But their mission was not without its challenges. From the time their contract was awarded, leaders of the two firms had just 96 hours to recruit, screen, and transport via chartered jet more than 100 individuals scattered across the U.S. to the Gaza Strip, where they then needed to sort out how to physically operate the checkpoint, mitigate security vulnerabilities, and minimize traffic congestion, the official said.
The model could inform future efforts to secure Gaza, some military contracting experts said.
Mick Mulroy, a former CIA paramilitary officer who is now an ABC News national security analyst, said private military contractors appear to be the only logical solution to peace in the short term.
“What is going to prevent the resurgence of Hamas? If it’s not a multinational military force, and it’s not the Israel Defense Forces — it’s the private security forces,” said Mulroy, who is also the founder of Fogbow, a humanitarian aid group. “Right now, there’s no alternative that I’ve seen.”
Confronting the past
Hamas launched a surprise attack across Israel’s southern border on Oct. 7, 2023, killing at least 1,200 Israelis while capturing about 250 Israeli hostages. Since then, Israel’s military response has killed at least 50,000 Gazans, most of them women and children.
A ceasefire agreement negotiated this past January ended last month when Israel resumed hostilities after saying Hamas had not released all remaining hostages. The conflict has led to a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including the collapse of the health care system.
Before the contractors deployed in January, a memo drafted by UG Solutions and circulated among former U.S. military personnel offered a daily rate of $1,100 for “operators” and $1,250 for medics, with a $10,000 advance paid “within 5 days of arrival in the country,” according to a copy obtained by ABC News.
The memo solicited inquiries from former “U.S. [Special Operations Forces] Personnel Only,” and while details of the mission were not made explicit, it noted that members of the team “will be able to defend yourself and there will be written [rules of engagement] once you arrive.”
They had reason to tread carefully. The last time American contractors were hired to work in Gaza, in 2003, three employees of the security firm DynCorp were killed by a roadside bomb while escorting U.S. officials near Beit Lahiya, some 40 kilometers north of Rafah.
Despite the precarious threat environment in Gaza, the hired ex-soldiers spent a considerable portion of their time troubleshooting obstacles related to the destitution of Palestinians travelling through their checkpoint, the official said. Limited fuel supplies in the region meant officials “got really good at pushing cars,” for example.
Another challenge for the two U.S.-based firms, which worked in tandem with a third Egyptian company, was to overcome the troubled reputation of security contractors working in the Middle East. Concerns about the use of American military contractors abroad exploded in 2007 when members of Blackwater, a private military company, killed 17 Iraqi civilians during an incident in Baghdad. Four of those hired soldiers were eventually convicted for their roles in the massacre, before they were later pardoned by President Donald Trump.
National security commentators have in the past bristled at the premise of using American contractors to work on the ground in Gaza. Peter Singer, the author of a book about contract soldiers, called it a “terrible idea” and a “not-even-half-baked notion” that merited heightened scrutiny. David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist, characterized its proposal as “a potentially controversial part of the plan” to secure Gaza.
The coalition official told ABC News that U.S. operators were cognizant of the “optics of the situation” and took proactive steps to not appear “intimidating” to Gazans passing through their checkpoint. The official described their personnel as mainly ex-Special Forces with experience in the region — “suburban dads” of an average age of 45-50.
“This was not going to be a security mission about running and gunning,” the official said. “This was going to be all about discipline and restraint.”
Several Gazans who used the checkpoint told ABC News that the contractors treated them with respect, often greeting motorists in halting Arabic. One Palestinian man who asked not to be named for security reasons observed that the contractors often tried to reduce the visibility of their weapons.
A ‘target on their backs’
Threats posed by Hamas and other hostile actors in the region were compounded in part by Trump’s rhetoric, regional experts told ABC News, which included a controversial proposal to redevelop the Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” displacing its population in the process. Hamas leaders said the mere suggestion was “capable of igniting the region.”
Ambassador Luis Moreno, a former senior U.S. diplomat in Tel Aviv, warned that Trump’s inflammatory comments likely placed a “target on their backs,” referring to the American contractors.
“It’s already an incredibly risky, risky job,” Moreno told ABC News. “There’s no doubt that Trump’s declarations on moving two million Gazans out of Gaza made their lives much more complicated.”
The founder of UG Solutions is Jameson Govoni, a Massachusetts-bred retired Green Beret who once said he “helped set up” a surveillance program for the Special Forces that aimed to “teach special operations soldiers how to conduct surveillance and find hard-to-find terrorist cells around the world.”
Govoni later founded the Sentinel Foundation, a nonprofit focused on combating child trafficking, and a for-profit hangover cure company called Alcohol Armor, which last year hosted a David Guetta concert in Las Vegas, according to a video it shared on social media.
Safe Reach Solutions, the logistics firm in Gaza, was founded by Phil Reilly, a former CIA paramilitary officer who is no stranger to precarious missions in hostile territories. He was among the first Americans to set foot in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001 — less than two weeks after the attacks.
The contractors concluded their work in Gaza last month when the cease-fire deal fell apart and Israeli forces resumed their bombing campaign. The Israeli Defense Forces now claim to occupy some 30% of Gaza territory.
After the ceasefire collapsed, U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff suggested using a “security force” in Gaza as a long-term solution. A spokesperson for Safe Reach Solutions said they had not discussed a return to the region with American officials.
(LONDON) — An investigation is underway as to what caused an Air India airliner carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members to crash shortly after takeoff on Thursday. Both black boxes of the aircraft have been found on Friday, an Indian official confirmed to ABC News.
The boxes — with one being damaged but recoverable — will be investigated in India and U.S. investigators are expected to arrive on Sunday, Shri G.V.G. Yugandhar, director general of India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, said.
The plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, was en route to the United Kingdom and crashed into a building in India’s Meghaninager area near Ahmedabad airport, leaving 246 dead and at least one surviving passenger, local officials and the airline said. Boeing’s Dreamliner planes had not previously been involved in an incident where passenger fatalities were reported.
“The flight, which departed from Ahmedabad at 13:38 hrs, was carrying 242 passengers and crew members on board the Boeing 787-8 aircraft,” the airline said in a statement on social media. “Of these, 169 are Indian nationals, 53 are British nationals, 1 Canadian national and 7 Portuguese nationals.”
The victims include 241 passengers and crew members, as well as five medical students who were inside the medical college and hospital the aircraft crashed into, according to hospital officials. Many others inside the building were injured — some seriously — and are receiving treatment, hospital officials said.
On Friday, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson confirmed the loss of 241 of the 242 people on board the aircraft, saying those at the airline are “devastated by this loss, and grieve for those affected, their families and loved ones.” He said a technical team is now helping at the crash site and nearly 100 caregivers are providing support to families.
“This morning, I visited the site and was deeply moved by the scenes. I also met key stakeholders in the government and assured them that Air India is committed to full cooperation with those working on the ground, and to the investigations,” Wilson said in a video posted on social media.
The Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad confirmed to ABC News on Thursday that Vishwaskumar Ramesh, one of the passengers on the downed Air India flight, is alive and hospitalized there.
“Everything happened in front of my eyes. I thought I would die,” Ramesh told NDTV in an exclusive interview on Friday. “The side where I was seated fell into the ground floor of the building. There was some space. When the door broke, I saw that space and I just jumped out.”
Officials earlier said no survivors had been expected in the crash. The process of retrieving the bodies of victims is almost complete and DNA profiling of the family members of victims will be done very soon, according to Indian Home Minister Amit Shah.
There were around 125,000 liters of fuel inside the aircraft, with temperatures so high that there was no opportunity to rescue the passengers, Shah said.
The Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation said the plane “fell on the ground outside the airport perimeter” immediately after it departed from the airport. Video from the site appeared to show the jet disappear below the tree line, which was followed seconds later by a ball of fire and a thick plume of gray smoke.
“The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a statement on social media on Thursday. “It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it.”
Air India announced it will organize two relief flights, one each from Delhi and Mumbia, to Ahmedabad for the next of kin passengers and Air India staff.
Tata Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate of companies that owns Air India, said they will provide families of each person who has lost their life in the crash with ₹1 crore (about $116,000) and will also cover the medical expenses of those injured.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Dada Jovanovic, Clara McMichael, Ellie Kaufman, Sam Sweeney and Camilla Alcini contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — The U.S. and Ukrainian governments touted the signing of a controversial minerals sharing deal as a launchpad for expansive bilateral economic cooperation — and as a signal of America’s long-term investment in a free Ukraine.
American and Ukrainian representatives signed the accord in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday after months of tense negotiations, President Donald Trump long having framed the proposal as means to recoup more than $100 billion worth of aid given to Kyiv since Russia launched its invasion three years ago.
“This partnership allows the United States to invest alongside Ukraine to unlock Ukraine’s growth assets, mobilize American talent, capital and governance standards that will improve Ukraine’s investment climate and accelerate Ukraine’s economic recovery,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a video announcing the deal.
Details of the agreement were later shared online by some members of Ukraine’s parliament, with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal expected to present the deal to the body — known as the Rada — on Thursday. Shmyhal this week previewed some parts of the agreement, saying it would not undermine Ukraine’s potential for accession to the European Union.
The draft published by lawmakers does not include any explicit U.S. security guarantees — long one of Kyiv’s primary demands. However, the agreement “guarantees new deliveries of American weapons, including air defense systems — their cost will be credited to a joint fund,” according to Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Thursday that the deal “marks an important milestone in Ukraine-U.S. strategic partnership aimed at strengthening Ukraine’s economy and security.”
Podolyak said the deal meant “Moscow has lost: Putin’s attempt to offer the U.S. a stake in the occupied Donbas’ mineral wealth has failed. We are strengthening alliances, securing resources to continue our resistance and forcing the world to see Ukraine as an equal player.”
“To sum up, the key outcome of this agreement is that the world’s leading power has become a co-investor in Ukraine,” Podolyak wrote.
The deal will need to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament, members of which suggested on Thursday it was too early to fully evaluate the agreement.
“Judging by the statement of the prime minister, it is better than the initial version,” Oleksandr Merezhko, a lawmaker representing Zelenskyy’s party and the chair of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told ABC News.
“It seems like we have managed to dodge Trump’s idea to turn the previously-provided U.S. military and material aid into Ukrainian debts,” he added.
The lawmaker suggested it was too early to say whether the deal represented a win for both Kyiv and Washington.
“It seems like Trump put pressure on us in an attempt to get a victory in his first 100 days in office,” Merezhko said. “The devil is in the details. But politically there are upsides. First, we have improved relations with Trump for whom it’s a win.”
Other members of parliament suggested that ratification would not be immediate. “I would really like to see the final document of the agreement,” lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko wrote on Telegram.
Lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak, meanwhile, suggested it may take until mid-May for the parliament to vote on the minerals agreement — “and that’s only if everything is submitted to the Rada on time,” he wrote on Telegram.
In Russia, Dmitry Medvedev — the former president and prime minister now serving as the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council — framed the deal as a defeat for Kyiv.
“Trump has broken the Kyiv regime into paying for American aid with minerals,” Medvedev — who through Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has become known for his hawkish statements — wrote on Telegram. “Now they will have to pay for military supplies with the national wealth of a disappearing country,” he wrote.
Nonetheless, Bessent said the agreement “clearly to Russian leadership that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term, it’s time for this cruel and senseless war to end the killing must stop.”
Bessent also said this deal was because of “President Trump’s tireless efforts to secure a lasting peace.”
ABC News’ Oleksiy Pshemyskiy, Nataliia Popova and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
