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As Pakistan-administered Kashmir prepares to hold its legislative election starting July 27, the region has been swept by unprecedented waves of violent unrest that have claimed at least 40 lives ahead of polling day. Most of the fatalities – 34 in total – are civilian protesters, with six police and paramilitary personnel also killed in the clashes. Rawalakot, a major population center in the territory, has borne the brunt of the worst bloodshed, with ordinary civilians often caught in the crossfire of confrontations between security forces and demonstrators.

Naqash Zardad, a 30-year-old employee of the regional education department, was one such unintended victim. Zardad was tending to his buffalo farm on the outskirts of Rawalakot when nearby clashes between police and protesters erupted, blocking all routes leading back to his home. When gunfire rang out during the confrontation, a stray bullet struck Zardad, killing him instantly, his uncle Altaf Hussain confirmed in an interview with the BBC. His death is just one example of how ordinary residents have been trapped between two opposing sides in a mounting political crisis.

At the core of the unrest is a long-simmering dispute over 12 reserved legislative seats in the territory’s 53-member regional assembly. These seats were first established under 1970s legislation to guarantee political representation for Kashmiri refugees who fled from Indian-administered Kashmir to settle in Pakistan decades ago, on the premise that they would retain a voice in regional governance if the long-standing Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan was eventually resolved. Today, however, the majority of people eligible for these seats do not actually reside in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, effectively barring local residents from contesting these positions and denying them proportional representation in the legislature.

The protest movement is led by the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), an alliance of local activist groups that has organized widespread marches and demonstrations demanding the full abolition of the reserved seats. JAAC argues that all legislative seats should be reserved exclusively for permanent residents of the region to ensure fair and representative governance, and the group has stated it has no intention of contesting the upcoming election itself.

In response to the protests, the Pakistani government has designated JAAC a banned organization under national anti-terrorism laws and launched a widespread crackdown on demonstrators. Critics of the government’s response have accused security forces of using excessive lethal force to suppress the peaceful protest movement, a charge that has sparked international condemnation.

Large swathes of the local population have heeded JAAC’s call for protests, turning out in large crowds to demonstrate against the seat reservation policy. The unrest has upended the entire electoral process, forcing candidates from all major political parties to scale back their public campaigning dramatically. Candidates’ vehicles and campaign property have been targeted in arson attacks, and multiple candidates have been subjected to physical violence, with authorities blaming JAAC for these attacks. Today, most public political rallies have been canceled, with campaign meetings instead confined to private homes or small street corner gatherings.

Noreen Arif, the only female candidate running for the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, confirmed that JAAC’s protest movement had forced her to move all campaign activities into private residences rather than hold public gatherings. Sardar Mukhtar Khan, a candidate from the main opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), noted that the protest movement commands widespread support among young local residents, leaving candidates with no option but to run limited, low-key campaigns. “An election candidate has to move according to the mood of the people in his constituency,” Khan told the BBC.

It was only in the final week of campaigning that senior leaders from the PPP and PML-N held the first large public rallies of the election cycle, a marked departure from the open, large-scale campaigning that defined previous elections in the region. When the BBC visited the regional capital of Muzaffarabad in the lead-up to polling, reporters documented a pervasive atmosphere of tension and fear across the city. Most residents declined to speak publicly about the election: pro-election residents and candidates fear being labeled traitors or collaborators by JAAC supporters, while JAAC backers report persistent harassment and intimidation from law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

The Pakistani government has remained firm in its commitment to hold the election as scheduled, spread across three voting phases starting July 27. Ameer Muqam, Pakistan’s federal minister for Kashmir Affairs, framed the vote as the only path forward for the region. “Whoever people vote for should come into power and make decisions regarding their future and destiny. This authority shouldn’t belong to just a few hundred or thousand people; it should rest with the millions of residents living here in Kashmir to decide who they want to bring in,” Muqam told the BBC.

Not all local observers agree that proceeding with the vote is the right course of action. Zahid Amin, the former head of the Muzaffarabad Development Authority, argued that under current conditions, any election result would lack all credibility. The political context for the vote is already unstable: in the 2021 legislative election, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) won an outright majority, but the party was ousted from power in a 2022 no-confidence vote, and the region has seen four different prime ministers take office in the four years since. Political analysts describe the 2025 election outcome as too close to call.

The mounting violence and political crackdown have drawn significant international concern. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued a public statement on July 17 calling for “prompt, thorough and impartial investigations into all deaths that have occurred due to the unrest, both amongst protesters and members of security forces.” Türk also criticized the government’s decision to ban JAAC under anti-terrorism legislation, noting that “the criminalisation of a civil society organisation and imposition of strict limitations on gatherings raise serious concerns about infringements on the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”

Neighboring India, which claims the entire territory of Kashmir alongside Pakistan, has blamed the unrest on “decades-long systemic exploitation and denial of fundamental rights” of local residents by Pakistan. The two nuclear-armed neighbors have each controlled part of Kashmir since independence from British rule, and the dispute has been a source of repeated cross-border conflict for decades. India has long accused Pakistan of sponsoring cross-border militant activity in Indian-administered Kashmir, a charge Pakistan consistently denies.

Bilawal Bhutto, chairman of the PPP, dismissed Indian statements on the unrest and called for an amicable resolution to the current crisis. Bhutto argued that both JAAC and the Pakistani government bear responsibility for the escalation of violence, and called for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission to address grievances, urging both sides to end the punishment of ordinary civilians. He also criticized the 40-day long shutdown of mobile phone and internet services across the region, noting that the prolonged blackout amounts to de facto collective punishment of the entire local population.

As polling day approaches, the region remains on edge, with deep divisions over the election and the future of political representation showing no signs of being resolved before votes are cast.

Tensions across the Middle East have surged to new heights this week, after the United States carried out its 12th consecutive day of strikes on Iranian territory, prompting Tehran to formalize a retaliatory “an eye for an eye” defense doctrine in response to explicit threats from former President Donald Trump to target Iranian civilian infrastructure.

Iranian state media confirmed Thursday that a U.S. strike on the border town of Shalamcheh, which lies along Iran’s frontier with Iraq, left two civilians dead and at least 11 others injured. The strikes also extended to Bushehr, the site of Iran’s only operational civilian nuclear power plant, where two U.S. missiles impacted the area.

U.S. Central Command has publicly confirmed the 12th straight night of offensive operations, framing the campaign as an effort to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting regional waters.”

In a provocative social media post, Trump laid out an explicit new red line for future U.S. action: every time Iran targets a vessel moving through the Strait of Hormuz — the strategically critical global chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s total oil and liquefied natural gas supplies transit — the U.S. will destroy key Iranian civilian infrastructure. “Any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT,” Trump wrote.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi pushed back immediately on the social platform X, making clear Tehran’s new position: “Our defense doctrine is clear: eye for an eye. Any aggression against Iran, including our infrastructure, will compel a powerful and decisive response.” He added that any third party providing support to the U.S. campaign would also be treated as a legitimate target for retaliation.

Iranian military spokesperson Mohammad Akraminia, speaking on state television, reinforced this stance, noting: “The armed forces’ retaliatory attacks will continue as long as the US attacks on the country’s infrastructure and coastal areas continue.”

Retaliatory strikes have already spread beyond Iran’s borders. On Thursday morning, both Jordan and Kuwait confirmed they intercepted incoming attacks, which Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirmed targeted U.S. military assets hosted in both countries. The Iranian army announced it deployed “destructive drones” to strike multiple U.S. facilities across Kuwait, including ammunition and logistics depots at Camp Doha, fuel storage tanks at Ali al-Salem Air Base, and an ammunition depot at Camp Arifjan.

In the Strait of Hormuz itself, the IRGC announced it had halted three transiting oil tankers on Thursday, asserting full control over the waterway. “The Strait of Hormuz is under our control… and any ship that is deceived by the US and intends to pass without coordination with the Islamic Republic of Iran will suffer the same fate,” the corps said.

The conflict has now expanded to the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthi movement — which recently entered the fray and declared a blockade on Saudi ports — claimed responsibility for missile and drone strikes on two Saudi oil tankers overnight. The Houthi movement identified the targeted vessels as the *Encelia* and the *Layla*. UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), the British body that monitors naval security in the region, confirmed the master of one tanker reported being struck by an unidentified projectile roughly 70 nautical miles southwest of Saudi Arabia’s Al Shuqaiq, adding that the projectile sparked a fire that the crew was working to extinguish. Saudi Arabia has confirmed the *Encelia* was hit, but has not yet issued comment on the second tanker.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Iran of manipulating the Houthis into joining the conflict, saying, “The Houthis largely were smart and stayed out of all this throughout the conflict, but they now apparently have gotten themselves suckered into this, going after Saudi Arabia and their ships. I hope they will de-escalate, because I think the Houthis, frankly, got snookered into this thing by the Iranians.”

As regional powers move to contain the escalation, Oman announced Thursday it is facilitating the resumption of de-escalation talks between the Houthi movement and the Saudi government to lower tensions in the Red Sea and Yemen.

BEIRUT — Kozo Okamoto, the Japanese radical militant who participated in one of the deadliest attacks targeting Israeli civilians more than 50 years ago, has died at the age of 78 in the Lebanese capital Beirut, according to an official announcement from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Palestinian faction that hosted and protected Okamoto for decades. The PFLP, the second-largest faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), confirmed that Okamoto passed away on Thursday following a long undisclosed illness.

After his release from Israeli custody, Okamoto settled permanently in Lebanon, where he lived under the protection of Palestinian leftist groups and made only a handful of public appearances over nearly 40 years. Within PFLP circles, he was known by the alias Ahmad al-Yabani, meaning Ahmad the Japanese. In a formal statement released after his death, the PFLP praised Okamoto’s decades-long commitment to the Palestinian cause, framing his life as one defined by sacrifice for anti-Israel struggle. “His journey was marked by immense sacrifices spanning decades on the battlefields of struggle in support of the Palestinian cause,” the group said, adding that Okamoto “never compromised nor faltered but remained steadfast to his principles.”

Okamoto’s legacy is inextricably tied to the 1972 attack on Tel Aviv’s former international airport, a coordinated joint operation between the PFLP and the Japanese Red Army (JRA), a violent ultra-leftist guerrilla group founded in 1971. On May 30, 1972, Okamoto and two JRA comrades flew to Tel Aviv from a European departure point, retrieved their luggage packed with hidden rifles and grenades, and opened fire on crowds in the airport terminal. The assault left 26 people dead and dozens more injured. Okamoto’s two collaborators were killed during the response to the attack, while Okamoto was wounded and taken into Israeli custody.

Convicted of multiple counts of murder and sentenced to life in Israeli prison, Okamoto served only 12 years of his sentence before being released in 1985 during a large-scale prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestinian guerrilla factions. Following his release, he was granted political asylum in Lebanon, where he remained until his death. Over the course of his decades in Lebanon, Tokyo repeatedly demanded that Lebanese authorities extradite Okamoto to Japan to face justice, but Beirut consistently rejected these requests, as Okamoto had become a celebrated figure among many Lebanese and across the Arab world for his alignment with the Palestinian struggle against Israel.

Okamoto’s life in Lebanon was not without legal incident. In 1997, Lebanese security forces arrested Okamoto and four other Japanese citizens who had been living illegally in the country, sheltered by Palestinian and leftist Lebanese groups during the chaos of the 1975-1990 Lebanese Civil War. After a high-profile trial, the four other Japanese detainees were transferred to Japanese authorities in 2000, while Okamoto became the first person ever to receive formal political asylum status from the Lebanese government. During his 1997 trial, Okamoto famously testified that he identified as “an Arab resistance fighter.”

The most high-profile public appearance Okamoto made during his time in Lebanon came in May 2022, when he attended a commemoration event at a Beirut cemetery — the resting place of many prominent Palestinian militants — to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1972 airport attack.

Beyond the 1972 airport attack, the JRA claimed responsibility for multiple high-profile terrorist attacks across the globe during the 1970s, including the 1975 seizure of the U.S. Consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The PFLP, for its part, is a radical Palestinian faction that first gained global notoriety for the 1970 simultaneous hijacking of four Western civilian airliners, and later for the 1976 hijacking of an Air France flight traveling from Tel Aviv to Paris that was diverted to Entebbe, Uganda. Today, PFLP leader Ahmed Saadat remains one of the most prominent Palestinian figures held in Israeli custody; he was imprisoned for his alleged role in organizing the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, an ultranationalist politician who openly advocated for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Israeli-controlled territory.

On Thursday, a large-scale incursion into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem was led by senior Israeli government officials and lawmakers, with thousands of ultranationalist Israelis entering the sacred Islamic site under heavy armed police protection, in a move that has sharply escalated regional tensions.

Prior to the entry of Israeli groups, Israeli security forces had blocked hundreds of Palestinian worshippers from reaching the mosque for pre-dawn prayers, forcing many faithful to hold prayer services in adjacent streets outside the complex. By 10 a.m. local time, the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs confirmed that at least 2,300 Israelis had entered the mosque’s courtyards, with the incursion expected to continue through midday.

Among the high-profile participants were Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, and Amit Halevi, a sitting legislator from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party. The incursion was timed to coincide with Tisha B’Av, a Jewish fast day that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. Ultranationalist Jewish groups that advocate for the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque to build a Third Jewish Temple on the site had organized the mass action, originally setting a target of 5,000 participants.

Witnesses on the ground documented participants violating longstanding site rules: they raised Israeli flags across the mosque courtyards, held Jewish prayer services, danced and sang, and even erected a temporary shade tent — all acts explicitly prohibited under the decades-old status quo agreement that governs the site.

The Palestinian Endowment Ministry issued a scathing condemnation of the incursion, calling it a “blatant incursion” led by senior Israeli political figures that represents a gross violation of the site’s Islamic sanctity and a direct attack on the historical and legal status quo at Al-Aqsa. “The entire 144-dunam Al-Aqsa Mosque complex is the exclusive, indivisible right of the Muslim world alone,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that “these provocative actions, carried out at the highest levels of the occupying government, are intended to ignite a religious war across the entire region.”

The status quo, a decades-old arrangement recognized by the international community, designates the entire Al-Aqsa compound as an exclusively Islamic holy site, with full administrative authority over access, worship, maintenance and excavations held by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, the Muslim religious trust that manages the site. However, since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it has gradually eroded this agreement, seizing control of entry access from the Waqf and facilitating regular daily incursions by ultranationalist Israelis. In recent years, these incursions have grown dramatically in size, drawing tens of thousands of Israeli participants annually.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate noted that Israeli authorities relaxed group size restrictions for Thursday’s incursion, allowing groups of up to 150 people to enter at once, compared to the usual cap of around 30. Over the past decade, Israeli officials have also increasingly permitted Jewish prayer and flag displays inside the compound, actions that directly contravene the status quo.

Days before the incursion, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, senior Al-Aqsa preacher and former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, warned that Israeli authorities were deliberately exploiting Jewish religious holidays to escalate provocative actions aimed at permanently changing the status of the holy site. He noted that officials have increasingly turned these occasions into opportunities to organize large-scale incursions involving cabinet ministers, senior officials and members of Israel’s parliament, in a bid to normalize the violations and grant them political legitimacy. The incursion proceeded amid widespread silence from the international community and major Islamic organizations, as highlighted in local Palestinian reporting on the event.

A brazen militant ambush targeting a district judicial official in Pakistan’s restive southwestern province of Balochistan has left two people dead, triggering swift pledges from the country’s top military leadership to wipe out all terrorist infrastructure operating across the nation. The attack unfolded Thursday on the outskirts of Mastung district, where separatist insurgent groups have sharply ramped up violent operations targeting both security personnel and civilian authorities in recent months. According to local Mastung police chief Abdul Rauf, District Judge Abdul Hakim Kakar was en route from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, to Mastung to preside over scheduled court hearings when the ambush was carried out. Both Kakar and his assigned security guard were killed at the scene, with the assailants fleeing before security reinforcements arrived. As of Friday morning, no militant organization has issued a public claim of responsibility for the attack. Counterterrorism analysts and local law enforcement however point to long-active Baloch separatist insurgent networks as the prime suspects, particularly the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an outlawed faction that has led a years-long insurgency against the Pakistani government. The BLA was officially designated a global terrorist organization by the United States in 2019, and has carried out dozens of high-profile attacks targeting government officials, security personnel, and civilian infrastructure across Balochistan in recent years. The targeted killing of Judge Kakar drew immediate and widespread condemnation from Pakistan’s top civilian leadership. President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti all issued statements denouncing the attack, with Bugti ordering law enforcement and counterterrorism units to launch an urgent manhunt to track down and apprehend all those involved in planning and executing the ambush. The attack comes against a backdrop of intensifying clashes between Pakistani security forces and Baloch insurgent groups across the province. In recent weeks alone, security operations targeting insurgent cells have killed more than 100 alleged Baloch militants across multiple districts of Balochistan, following a string of large-scale insurgent attacks that killed dozens of security personnel and civilians. On the same day as Thursday’s ambush, Pakistan’s Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir used a public address at a national security workshop in Rawalpindi, the country’s main garrison city, to reaffirm the military’s unwavering commitment to rooting out terrorism. “Operations against militants in Balochistan and all other parts of the country will continue until the menace of terrorism and its abettors are eliminated from Pakistan,” Munir stated, according to an official statement released by the Pakistani military. He added that coordinated, sustained operations by security forces and law enforcement agencies, supported by broad public backing, would ultimately bring lasting stability and peace to Balochistan. Munir also repeated longstanding Pakistani military accusations that foreign powers are backing proxy insurgent groups in Balochistan to foment unrest and destabilize the province, stressing that these disruptive efforts would be defeated through a “firm and decisive response” from Pakistan’s armed forces. As Pakistan’s largest and least densely populated province, Balochistan has faced decades of insurgent violence. Multiple separatist Baloch factions have waged an armed campaign against the federal government since the early 2000s, demanding greater political autonomy and control over the province’s abundant natural energy and mineral resources. In addition to separatist violence, the province has also faced repeated attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, an affiliate of the Afghan Taliban that has carried out hundreds of attacks across Pakistan in recent years.

In a closely watched legal development out of India’s capital New Delhi, a prominent Kashmiri human rights campaigner and a respected independent journalist have walked free from jail on bail after years of detention on controversial terrorism financing charges stemming from their work in India-administered Kashmir.

Rights advocate Khurram Parvez was first taken into custody under India’s sweeping Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), a strict anti-terror legislation, back in 2021, while journalist and researcher Irfan Mehraj was arrested under the same law two years later in 2023. Though both were released from New Delhi’s Tihar Jail late Wednesday, their freedom remains heavily constrained by strict court-ordered conditions, as India’s federal National Investigation Agency (NIA), the country’s top counterterrorism body, moves to overturn the bail ruling.

The release marks a rare win for critics of the Indian government’s widespread crackdown on dissent in Kashmir, a campaign that has ramped up dramatically since New Delhi revoked the Himalayan region’s long-held semi-autonomous special constitutional status in August 2019. In the years following that policy shift, authorities have used the stringent anti-terror law to detain dozens of rights workers, independent journalists, and political dissidents across the region, drawing widespread international condemnation.

The path to release began last week, when a lower Indian court granted bail to Parvez and Mehraj. The NIA immediately filed an appeal to block the order, bringing the case before the Delhi High Court. On Tuesday, the high court declined to suspend the lower court’s release ruling, but sided with the agency to impose far harsher restrictions on the pair’s movement, association, and public activity while the appeal proceeds through the legal system.

International human rights organizations, including the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, have repeatedly called for the pair’s release for years, arguing their detention was solely a result of their legitimate human rights documentation and journalistic work. Parvez has been a leading figure with the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a prominent regional human rights organization that has documented widespread abuses by Indian security forces in Kashmir for decades. Mehraj worked as a researcher with the group alongside his independent journalism.

The NIA’s case alleges that Parvez, Mehraj, and the JKCCS used the organization to channel funding to militant groups and advance a separatist political agenda in the region. Both men have repeatedly and categorically denied all the allegations leveled against them. The JKCCS has become one of the most prominent sources of on-the-ground reporting on human rights violations in Kashmir, publishing in-depth investigations that document what it describes as systemic, routine torture by Indian security forces deployed across the region. India maintains hundreds of thousands of troops in Indian-administered Kashmir, and the JKCCS has repeatedly highlighted that broad legal immunity granted to security personnel has created a culture of impunity that enables ongoing abuse with no accountability.

Following the pair’s release, two leading global human rights groups issued a statement condemning the legal proceedings against them. The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization Against Torture called the charges against Parvez and Mehraj “trumped-up,” arguing the entire case is a politically motivated effort to discredit both the men and the legitimate human rights work carried out by the JKCCS. The organizations renewed their call for Indian authorities to drop all charges against the pair entirely.

Full legal proceedings against Parvez and Mehraj are set to continue in the coming weeks, with the NIA’s appeal against the bail ruling expected to be heard in the Delhi High Court in the near future.

The Kashmir region has been mired in conflict for nearly 80 years, with both India and Pakistan claiming the entire Himalayan territory. Since 1989, armed militant groups have fought against New Delhi’s rule in Indian-administered Kashmir, where the majority of the population identifies as Muslim, with many supporters backing either unification with Pakistan or full independence for the region.