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.
(LONDON and DELHI) — An Air India airliner carrying 242 passengers and crew en route to the United Kingdom from India crashed shortly after takeoff, with at least one passenger surviving the crash, local officials said.
“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 posted on social media. “Of these, 169 are Indian nationals, 53 are British nationals, 1 Canadian national and 7 Portuguese nationals.”
The Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad confirmed to ABC News that Ramesh Vishwaskumar, one passenger on the downed Air India flight, is alive and hospitalized there.
Officials earlier said no survivors had been expected in the crash.
The plane, a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, crashed in the Meghaninagar area near Ahmedabad airport, in India’s Gujarat state, Malik said Thursday. Boeing’s Dreamliner planes had not previously been involved in an incident where passenger fatalities were reported. This plane had more than 41,000 hours of flying time, which is considered average for this aircraft, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.
We are aware of initial reports and are working to gather more information,” Boeing said in a statement.
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.
“Heavy black smoke was seen coming from the accident site,” the Directorate General said in the statement.
India’s Central Industrial Security Force released photos from the site of the crash, which appeared to include civilians and emergency personnel working to put out flaming wreckage. One photo appeared to show the damaged tail of the airplane resting partially inside a hole in a building.
The Indian Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu said he had “directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action” to respond to the crash.
“Rescue teams have been mobilized, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support are being rushed to the site,” the minister added.
GE Aerospace, the aircraft engine manufacturer, said in a statement they have also activated their emergency response team and are “prepared to support our customer and the investigation.”
The local governor, Bhupendra Patel, spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the crash to coordinate their emergency response, officials said. Patel said he ordered a so-called “green corridor” for emergency vehicles to travel between the crash site and local hospitals.
Modi in a statement confirmed that he’d been in touch with local officials.
“The tragedy in Ahmedabad has stunned and saddened us,” he said in a statement on social media. “It is heartbreaking beyond words. In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected by it.”
The airline initially announced the crash in a statement on social media, saying the flight had been “involved in an incident,” adding that it was “ascertaining the details” of the incident. The airline updated its social media profiles to display all-black profile pictures.
Air India also announced it will organize two relief flights, one each from Delhi and Mumbai, 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.
The flight was scheduled to fly from Ahmedabad airport, which is officially Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, to London’s Gatwick Airport.
It had been scheduled to depart at 9:50 a.m. local time, with a planned arrival time in London at 18:25 p.m. local time. Gatwick in a statement confirmed the scheduled arrival time.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was being updated on the situation in Ahmedabad, adding that his “thoughts are with the passengers and their families at this deeply distressing time.”
“The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,” Starmer said in a statement.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement he is “heartbroken to hear the news of the tragic plan crash” and will “stand with the emergency responders working to help those impacted.”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also responded to the incident, saying he extends condolences “to the families of the victims grieving this immense loss.”
The captain had 8,200 hours of experience and the copilot had 1,100 hours of flying experience, India’s Directorate General added.
The National Transportation Safety Board will be leading a team of U.S. investigators traveling to India to assist in the investigation of the crash.
All information regarding the investigation will be provided by the Indian government.
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Ellie Kaufman, Clara McMichael, Sam Sweeney and Camilla Alcini contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — The Israeli military on Tuesday issued an evacuation warning for Yemen’s Sana’a International Airport, saying being in the nearby area “exposes you to danger.”
Avichay Adraee, the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic spokesperson, posted the warning on social media two days after a ballistic missile launched from Yemen by the Iran-backed Houthis struck near Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.
“We call upon you to evacuate the airport area — Sana’a International Airport — immediately and warn everyone in your vicinity of the need to evacuate this area immediately,” Adraee said. “Failure to evacuate and move away from the place exposes you to danger.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday again claimed “total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear program during the NATO summit in the Netherlands, escalating his pushback on an early Pentagon intelligence report suggesting joint U.S.-Israeli strikes may have set back Iran’s nuclear program back by only a matter of months.
“I believe it was total obliteration,” Trump told reporters speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in The Hague, Netherlands.
A preliminary analysis of the strikes by the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. Central Command prompted questions as the efficacy of the operation. Two people familiar with the report told ABC News it suggested the strikes did limited damage and that Iran was able to relocate highly enriched uranium stocks before the strikes occurred.
Later on Wednesday, during a solo news conference, Trump continued to push back on that analysis and claimed American pilots who carried out the strikes were being demeaned by news reports about the Pentagon’s preliminary assessment.
“Since then, we’ve collected additional intelligence,” he said. “We’ve also spoken to people who have seen the site, and the site is obliterated, and we think everything nuclear is down there. They didn’t take it out.”
“They presented something that wasn’t finished,” Trump said of U.S. intelligence reports on the impact of the U.S. strikes. Over the course of the news conference, Trump highlighted Israeli and Iranian reports of the damage caused by the strike.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Wednesday that the country’s nuclear facilities had been “badly damaged,” as quoted by the Associated Press — which Trump repeated.
On Iran, Trump told reporters he’s not interested in restarting negotiations and didn’t view it as “necessary.” Though he also said that the U.S. would be talking with Iran “next week” and “we may sign an agreement. I don’t know.
“I don’t see them being back involved in the nuclear business anymore,” Trump said of Tehran.
Trump earlier Wednesday insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “basically decades,” adding, “It’s gone for years.”
“I believe they didn’t have a chance to get anything out, because we acted fast,” Trump said. “If it would have taken two weeks, maybe. But it’s very hard to remove that kind of material, very hard and very dangerous. Plus, they knew we were coming, and if they know we’re coming, they’re not going to be down there.”
Asked if they could rebuild and whether the U.S. would strike again, Trump said that would be someone else’s problem.
“I’m not going to have to worry about that,” he said. “It’s gone for years, years, very tough to rebuild, because the whole thing is collapsed. In other words, inside, it’s all collapsed. Nobody can get in to see it, because it’s collapsed.”
Asked if he trusted U.S. intelligence, the president said the initial report was “very inconclusive. The intelligence says we don’t know, it could have been very severe, that’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct, but I think we can take the ‘we don’t know.’ It was very severe. It was obliteration.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke in support of the president’s position, having accompanied Trump to The Hague.
Like Trump, Hegseth (whom the president described as the “secretary of war”) claimed what he called “fake news” about the Pentagon assessment as demeaning the B-2 pilots who carried out the strikes.
“These pilots these refuels these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people in the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom,” Hegseth said, speaking next to Trump at his news conference.
The defense secretary also rejected the early Pentagon analysis of the damage done by the military operation.
“Given the 30,000 pounds of explosives and capability of those munitions, it was devastation underneath Fordo,” Hegseth said.
“Any assessment that tells you it was something otherwise is speculating with other motives,” Hegseth continued. “And we know that because when you actually look at the report, by the way, it was a top secret report, it was preliminary, it was low confidence.”
Hegseth suggested the leak of the report had “a political motive,” adding, “We’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes.”
Rubio also claimed that the leak of the preliminary report was politically motivated, saying that the attacks led to “complete and total obliteration.”
“But all this leaker stuff, these leakers are professional stabbers,” he said. “They go out and they read this stuff, and then they tell you what it says against the law, but they characterize it for you in a way that’s absolutely false.”
The report prompted further consternation among Trump’s opponents in Washington. Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons told ABC News at the NATO summit it is too soon to determine the success of U.S. strikes, adding that the recent round of fighting could have been avoided if Trump had not withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal in his first term.
“The American public needs answers for what what’s really going on,” Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. “If what we see is Iran’s nuclear program has not been obliterated, then we need to try and get Iran back to the negotiating table,” she added.
Shaheen said further nuclear tensions are also possible, as Tehran may “be convinced their race to get a nuclear weapon is even more important — given North Korea’s example — and they will do everything possible to get there as quickly as possible.”
Meanwhile, Trump said the ceasefire is “going very well” despite Tuesday’s continued exchanges, which prompted him to lambast both Israel and Iran and to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn him off further attacks.
“Israel came back yesterday,” he said. “I was so proud of them, because they came back, you know, they went out because they felt it was a violation. And technically they were right, but it just wouldn’t have worked out very well. And they brought the planes back.”
“They’re not going to be fighting each other,” he added of Israel and Iran. “They’ve had it. They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell. You can’t stop them. Let them fight for about two, three minutes. Then it’s easier to stop them.”
Trump said the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday proved decisive. “That hit ended the war,” he said, likening the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Japan at the end of World War II.
“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing that ended that war,” Trump said. “If we didn’t take that out, they would have been, they’d be fighting right now,” he continued.
The president expressed optimism about the future of U.S. and Iranian relations.
“I think we’ll end up having somewhat of a relationship with Iran,” he said. “I’ve had a relationship over the last four days. They agreed to the ceasefire, and it was a very equal agreement. They both said, that’s enough. They both said it.”
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Luis Martinez, Anne Flaherty and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
