SRINAGAR: Leaders of Indian-administered Kashmir’s biggest political party were sworn into office Wednesday to run a largely powerless government after the first local election since India stripped the disputed region of its special status five years ago.
National Conference leader Omar Abdullah will be the region’s chief minister after his party won the most seats in the three-phased election. It has support from India’s main opposition Congress party, although Congress decided not to be a part of the new government for now.
The vote was Kashmir’s first in a decade and the first since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government scrapped the Muslim-majority region’s long-held semi-autonomy in 2019. The National Conference staunchly opposed the move, and its victory is seen as a referendum against the Modi government’s changes.
Lt. Gov. Manoj Sinha, New Delhi’s top administrator in Kashmir, administered the oaths of office to Abdullah and the five members of his council of ministers in a ceremony under tight security at a lakeside venue in the region’s main city of Srinagar. Some of India’s top opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party, attended.
However, there will be a limited transfer of power from New Delhi to the local government as Kashmir will remain a “union territory” — directly controlled by the federal government — with India’s Parliament as its main legislator. Kashmir’s statehood would have to be restored for the new government to have powers similar to other states of India.
India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety. The nuclear-armed rivals have fought two of their three wars over the territory since they gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
Kashmir’s last assembly election in 2014 brought to power Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, the first time ruled in a coalition with the local Peoples Democratic Party. The government collapsed in 2018, after the BJP withdrew from the coalition and New Delhi took the region under its direct control.
A year later, the federal government downgraded and divided the former state into two centrally governed union territories, Ladakh and Jammu-Kashmir. The move — which largely resonated in India and among Modi supporters — was mostly opposed in Kashmir as an assault on its identity and autonomy amid fears that it would pave the way for demographic changes in the region.
The region has since been on edge with civil liberties curbed and media freedoms restricted.
Like on election days, authorities on Wednesday limited access of foreign media to the oath ceremony and denied press credentials to most journalists working with international media, including The Associated Press, without citing any reason.
In the recently concluded election, the National Conference won 42 seats, mainly from the Kashmir Valley, the heartland of the anti-India rebellion, while the BJP secured 29 seats, all from the Hindu-dominated areas of Jammu. The Congress succeeded in six constituencies.
Militants in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.
India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.
Experts say the new government, stripped of all the essential powers, would face a daunting task to fulfil its election promises against huge public expectations to resist the 2019 changes and the federal government’s tight control.
Praveen Donthi, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, said the region’s political vacuum of the last few years will not vanish with the polls alone.
“The Modi government should build on it by restoring full statehood and empowering the government,” said Donthi. “Otherwise, it will intensify disaffection and is a set up for failure.”
Modi and his powerful home minister, Amit Shah, have repeatedly stated that the region’s statehood will be restored after the election, without specifying a timeline. However, they vowed to block any move aimed at undoing the 2019 changes but promised to help in the region’s economic development.
For the new chief minister, meanwhile, it’s going to be a tightrope walk.
“As a pro-India politician at the helm of this powerless administration, Omar Abdullah knows his limitations,” Donthi said. “He would be looking at his job as a buffer to moderate the worst instincts of New Delhi, but he would be clutching at straws.”
Five years after losing special status, Kashmir gets a largely powerless government
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Five years after losing special status, Kashmir gets a largely powerless government
- The region has been on edge since 2019, with civil liberties curbed and media freedoms restricted
- There will be a limited transfer of power from New Delhi that will remain Kashmir’s main legislator
Germany says it broke up a far-right group that planned attacks. 5 teens have been arrested
- The early-morning arrests in various parts of Germany were accompanied by searches at 13 properties
- Prosecutors said they are also investigating three other people, ages 18 to 21, who are already in custody
The early-morning arrests in various parts of Germany were accompanied by searches at 13 properties, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
Four of those arrested — identified only as Benjamin H., Ben-Maxim H., Lenny M. and Jason R., in line with German privacy rules — are suspected of membership in a domestic terror organization. The fifth, Jerome M., is accused of supporting the group. Two of the arrested also are accused of attempted murder and aggravated arson. All are between the ages of 14 and 18.
Prosecutors said they are also investigating three other people, ages 18 to 21, who are already in custody. All the suspects are German citizens.
According to the prosecutors, the group was formed in mid-April 2024 or earlier. They said that its members saw themselves as the last resort to defend the “German nation” and aimed to bring about the collapse of Germany’s democratic order, with attacks on homes for asylum-seekers and on facilities associated with the left-wing political spectrum.
Two of the suspects set a fire at a cultural center in Altdöbern in eastern Germany in October, prosecutors said, adding that several people living in the building at the time escaped injury only by chance.
In January, another two suspects allegedly broke a window at a home for asylum-seekers in Schmölln and tried unsuccessfully to start a blaze by setting off fireworks. They daubed the group’s initials and slogans such as “Foreigners out,” “Germany for the Germans” and “Nazi area,” as well as swastikas, prosecutors said.
Also in January, three suspects allegedly planned an arson attack on a home for asylum-seekers in Senftenberg, but it never came about because of the earlier arrests of two of the men.
Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said it was “particularly shocking” that all of those arrested Wednesday were minors at the time the group was allegedly founded.
“This is an alarm signal and it shows that right-wing extremist terrorism knows no age,” Hubig said in a statement.
In a separate case a week ago, German authorities banned a far-right group called “Kingdom of Germany” as a threat to the country’s democratic order and arrested four of its alleged leaders.
In an annual report released Tuesday, the Federal Criminal Police Office said that the number of violent crimes with a right-wing motivation was up 17.2 percent last year to 1,488. That was part of an overall increase in violent politically motivated offenses to 4,107, an increase of 15.3 percent.
Ukrainian ex-politician shot dead outside Madrid’s American school
MADRID: An unidentified gunman or gunmen shot and killed former Ukrainian politician Andriy Portnov on Wednesday morning outside the gates of the American School in Madrid’s affluent neighborhood of Pozuelo, a source close to the investigation said.
Police received the call about the shooting at 9.15 a.m. (0715 GMT) local time, the Madrid police told Reuters, without identifying the victim.
Radio station Cadena SER said the man was taking his children to the school when he was shot.
Portnov was a senior aide to Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovich who was ousted in 2014.
Russian missile attack kills Ukrainian servicemen in training
- Moscow’s forces have inflicted casualties in attacks on Ukrainian military educational institutions and various formal outdoor gatherings
KYIV: A Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian military shooting range killed six servicemen and wounded at least 10 more during training on Tuesday, Ukraine’s national guard said on Wednesday, adding that the commander of the unit had been suspended.
Russia’s defense ministry had said on Tuesday that the missile attack on the training camp in the Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine near the Russian border killed up to 70 Ukrainian service members, including 20 instructors.
The Ukrainian national guard statement said an internal investigation was underway and the necessary information was shared with law enforcement agencies.
“The investigation will provide a legal assessment of the actions of all persons who made the relevant decisions,” it said about the attack on the military unit’s shooting range.
After previous deadly strikes on military training camps, Ukraine launched investigations into possible negligence.
During more than three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Moscow’s forces have inflicted casualties in attacks on Ukrainian military educational institutions and various formal outdoor gatherings.
Four children killed in school bus attack in southwestern Pakistan: government officials
- At least four children were killed on Wednesday and over 30 wounded in a suspected suicide bombing that targeted a bus carrying students from a military run school in southwestern Pakistan, officials
QUETTA: At least four children were killed on Wednesday and over 30 wounded in a suspected suicide bombing that targeted a bus carrying students from a military run school in southwestern Pakistan, officials said.
“A bus carrying children of the APS (Army Public School) was targeted with a bomb, the nature of which is still being determined,” Yasir Iqbal Dashti, a senior local government official in Khuzdar district of Balochistan province, told AFP.
“The initial probe suggests it was a suicide bombing,” he added.
A senior police official confirmed the death toll to AFP on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to speak to the media, adding that it could rise.
The school caters to the children of army personnel and civilians living in the area.
In 2014, the Army Public School in Peshawar in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province was attacked by gunmen who killed more than 150 people — mostly students.
The horrific attack sparked a massive crackdown against militancy that had thrived for years in the border regions.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi offered his “heartfelt sympathy” to the families of the victims, adding that “beasts who target innocent children deserve no mercy.”
Flood victims stranded on roofs as downpours lash eastern Australia
- Storms have already dumped more than four months of rain in just two days in parts of New South Wales
- Authorities say that water levels of a river in Taree surged past a previous record in 1929
SYDNEY: Fast-moving floodwaters rose Wednesday in eastern Australia, inundating homes and leaving residents stranded on their roofs overnight, as authorities warned more rain was expected in coming days.
Storms have already dumped more than four months of rain in just two days in parts of New South Wales, engulfing homes, businesses and roads in muddy waters, authorities said.
“We have a situation where the rain has been falling quite heavily and hard and it has not been moving away. Part of that is because the ground is saturated and the rivers are swollen,” the state’s emergency minister Jihad Dib told reporters.
Taree, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) north of Sydney, is a key area of concern for emergency services after 415 millimeters (16.34 inches) of rain lashed the town since Monday – more than four times the mean monthly rainfall for May.
Authorities said that water levels of a river in Taree surged past a previous record in 1929, reaching 6.3 meters (20.6 feet) on Wednesday.
The rising floodwaters left locals stuck on roofs overnight, with rescuers unable to reach them due to the bad weather.
Taree resident Holly Pillotto, who was among those stranded on an upper level of her home, said she was desperate for assistance as floodwaters continued to rise.
“Our neighbors on the back verandah here are also stranded,” she told Australia’s Channel Nine. “It’s a really dangerous spot to be.”
Dib said that emergency services were “throwing everything we have into” reaching those affected.
State Emergency Service Chief Superintendent Dallas Byrnes said the situation was “incredibly dynamic and escalating,” with more than 150 flood rescues conducted overnight.
“We’ve got a lot of people getting rescued from rooftops and from upper levels of houses,” Byrnes told the national broadcaster ABC.
However, he warned that “conditions are quite treacherous and it may be that those aviation assets are unable to fly throughout the day.”
The agency said that about 16,000 people, or 7,400 dwellings, would remain isolated until at least Thursday.
More heavy rain is expected in the coming 48 hours – with some locations to receive 200 millimeters (7.87 inches) – before conditions begin to ease, authorities said Wednesday.
Scientists have warned that heatwaves and other extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense as global temperatures rise because of climate change.
