NEW YORK, May 8 – A pro-Palestinian protest broke out at Columbia University on Wednesday afternoon and more than 100 demonstrators occupied part of the university’s main library, leading to the arrest of some 75 individuals.
Tensions escalated quickly as clashes erupted between protesters and university public safety officers. Protesters were pushed back toward the library entrance, and two safety officers sustained injuries during the confrontation. A fire alarm was triggered amid the chaos.
Protesters chanted slogans including “No cops. No K.K.K. No fascist U.S.A.” and “Free Palestine.”
The New York police entered the main campus of Columbia University at the university’s request around 6 p.m. local time (2200 GMT) and made arrests on the grounds of trespassing.
This marks the most significant protest at Columbia University since the demonstrations in April 2024 and resulted in a big number of arrests to date.
LAHORE, Pakistan – Pakistan’s air defense system shot down an Indian drone early Thursday in the eastern city of Lahore, according to Pakistani officials, as India evacuated thousands of people from villages near the two countries’ highly militarized frontier in the disputed region of Kashmir.
The drone incident follows Indian missile strikes on Pakistani locations that killed 31 civilians a day earlier, including women and children, according to officials.
Tensions between the two countries have spiked since April 22, when gunmen killed 26 people, mostly Indian Hindu tourists, in India-controlled Kashmir. India accused Pakistan of backing the militants who carried out the attack, something Islamabad has denied.
Local police official Mohammad Rizwan said a drone was downed near Walton Airport, an airfield in a residential area of Lahore that also contains military installations, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the border with India.
Local media reported that two additional drones were shot down in other cities of Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital.
Two security officials said a small Indian drone was taken down by Pakistan’s air defense system. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. It was not immediately clear if the drone was armed.
The incident could not be independently verified, and Indian officials did not immediately comment.
In Punjab’s Chakwal district, a drone cashed into farmland. No casualties were reported. District police chief Ghulam Mohiuddin did not say whose drone it was. Authorities have secured the wreckage and are investigating the drone’s origin and purpose.
India said its strikes Wednesday targeted at least nine sites in Pakistan linked to planning terrorist attacks against India. Some of these targets were in Punjab and most of Wednesday’s casualties were in this province.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif vowed overnight to avenge the killings but gave no details, raising fears of a broader conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Across the de-facto border in Indian-controlled Kashmir, tens of thousands of people slept in shelters overnight, officials and residents said Thursday.
Indian authorities evacuated civilians from dozens of villages living close to the highly militarized Line of Control overnight while some living in border towns like Uri and Poonch left their homes voluntarily, three police and civil officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with departmental regulations.
SANTA ANA, Calif. – One student was killed and two others were wounded in a stabbing in front of a Southern California high school Wednesday, authorities said.
The three male Santa Ana High students were taken to a hospital, where one of them died and the other two were in stable condition, according to city police spokesperson Officer Natalie Garcia.
The stabbing happened in the afternoon as students were leaving school for the day, district spokesperson Fermin Leal said. The incident involved both students and nonstudents.
Authorities were searching for at least two suspects whose connection to the school and motive were not clear, Garcia said.
Other details such as the ages of the victims were not immediately made public.
After-school programs and athletics were canceled, and officials said the school would make crisis counselors available Thursday.
Santa Ana is a city of about 300,000 people roughly 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles. The school serves roughly 3,000 students.
NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD, May 8 – A blast was heard in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore on Thursday morning, according to broadcaster Geo TV and a Reuters witness, a day after Indian strikes at multiple locations in the country and fears of an escalation in conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
There was no immediate word on the reason for the blast.
India hit “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan in the early hours of Wednesday, two weeks after it accused the Islamic nation of involvement in an attack in Indian Kashmir in which 26 people – mostly Hindu tourists – were killed.
Islamabad had denied the accusation and vowed to retaliate to the missile strikes, also saying it shot down five Indian aircraft. The Indian embassy in Beijing termed reports of fighter jets being shot down as “misinformation”.
Pakistan says at least 31 of its civilians were killed and about 50 wounded in the strikes and in cross-border shelling that followed, while India says 13 of its civilians died and 43 were wounded.
The cross-border exchange of fire tapered off slightly overnight, Indian officials said.
India also conducted blackout drills in regions close to its border with Pakistan, including the northern city of Amritsar which houses the Golden Temple revered by Sikhs, in anticipation of retaliation to its strikes.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, most cities restored some normalcy and children returned to school, but in the border province of Punjab, hospitals and civil defence authorities remained on high alert.
Although Pakistan’s federal government has pledged to respond to India’s strikes, Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told The New York Times on Wednesday that Pakistan was ready to de-escalate.
With India saying it would “respond” if Pakistan “responds”, global powers have urged a calming of tensions. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he hoped the countries could “work it out”, adding he “will be there” if he can help.
The relationship between India and Pakistan has been fraught with tension since they gained independence from colonial Britain in 1947, and the countries have fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir.
The current escalation in tensions comes at a precarious time for Pakistan’s $350 billion economy, which is still recovering from an economic crisis that brought it to the brink of defaulting on external debt obligations in 2023 before it secured funding from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Polish police operate near the main access to the Warsaw University after an attack with an axe on the campus, in Warsaw, Poland, May 7, 2025. REUTERS
WARSAW, May 7 – Police said on Wednesday they had detained a 22-year-old Polish man after he killed one person with an axe at Warsaw University, in an attack the institution described as a “huge tragedy”.
“Police have detained a man who entered the University of Warsaw campus. One person died, another was taken to hospital with injuries,” Warsaw Police said in a statement on X.
They said the incident occurred at around 6:40 p.m. (1640 GMT), when the man attacked people on the campus with an axe, adding that the detainee was a 22-year-old Polish citizen.
Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported that the attacker was a third-year law student.
Private broadcaster Polsat News reported that a woman’s severed head and an axe had been found at the university.
A spokesperson for the district prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether a severed head had been found.
The spokesperson said that a female administrative employee of the university had been killed at the scene and a security guard was injured and was taken to hospital in critical condition.
He said that the attacker had entered an auditorium at the university.
Reuters reporters at the scene saw police vans and a cordon around the auditorium where the attack took place.
The Rector of the University of Warsaw said in a statement that May 8 would be a day of mourning at the institution, calling the attack a “huge tragedy”.
“We express our great sorrow and sympathy to the family and loved ones,” the statement read.
Map showing nine sites targeted by India in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir on May 7, 2025. REUTERS
MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan/NEW DELHI, May 7 – India hit Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir with missiles on Wednesday and Pakistan vowed to retaliate saying it shot down five Indian aircraft, in the worst clash in more than two decades between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
India told more than a dozen foreign envoys in New Delhi that “if Pakistan responds, India will respond,” fuelling fears of a larger military conflict in one of the world’s most dangerous – and most populated – nuclear flashpoint regions.
The escalation comes at a fragile moment for Pakistan’s $350 billion economy, which recently emerged from an economic crisis with the government trying to shore up finances and make progress on the $7 billion International Monetary Fund loan programme of 2024.
India said it struck nine “terrorist infrastructure” sites, some of them linked to an attack by Islamist militants that killed 25 Hindu tourists and one local in Indian Kashmir last month.
Pakistan said at least 31 of its civilians had been killed and 46 wounded, a military spokesperson said, and that India “had ignited an inferno in the region”. This included deaths from the strikes and border shelling.
Islamabad pledged to respond “at a time, place and manner of its choosing to avenge the loss of innocent Pakistani lives and blatant violation of its sovereignty”, emphatically rejecting Indian allegations it had terrorist camps on its territory.
“For the blatant mistake that India made last night, it will now have to pay the price,” Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said in a televised address on state broadcaster PTV to the nation. “Perhaps they thought that we would retreat, but they forgot that…this is a nation of brave people.”
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told broadcaster Geo News that Islamabad would only strike Indian military targets and not civilians, in retaliation.
The Indian strikes included Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, for the first time since the last full-scale war between the old enemies more than half a century ago.
“The targets we had set were destroyed with exactness according to a well-planned strategy,” India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said. “We have shown sensitivity by ensuring that no civilian population was affected in the slightest.”
Islamabad said none of the six locations targeted in Pakistan were militant camps.
Fifty-seven commercial aircraft were in the air over Pakistan when India attacked, endangering thousands of lives, the spokesperson said, adding they included airlines of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Thailand, South Korea and China.
In Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, the Indian strike had badly damaged a mosque-seminary in the heart of the city. Five missiles killed three people in the two storey structure, which also had residential quarters, locals said.
Reuters journalists saw the roof and walls of the concrete building crumbled under the impact of the strikes and household items scattered on the first floor.
An Indian source said the mosque was actually a “terrorist camp”, which Pakistan denies. Pakistan has said all targets were civilians.
Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both sides claim in full and control in part.
GAZA – The death toll from Israeli warplanes targeting two schools in Al-Bureij refugee camp and Gaza City, since last night and until dawn Wednesday, has risen to 49, the majority of whom were children, women, and the elderly.
WAFA correspondents, citing medical sources, reported that the death toll from the two massacres committed by the occupation forces in the bombing of Abu Hamisa School, which houses displaced persons in Al-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, last night, has risen to 33 Palestinian civilians, with nearly 73 reported wounded. The school was targeted twice.
The death toll from the bombing of Al-Karama School east of Gaza City this morning also rose to 16 civilians and dozens wounded.
HELSINKI – A fighter jet belonging to the Finnish Air Force crashed near an airport in northern Finland on Wednesday, the country’s military said, adding that the pilot had ejected from the aircraft and was taken to hospital.
Smoke was seen rising from the general direction of where the aircraft went down and there was a strong smell of smoke in the air, public broadcaster Yle reported. The area was cordoned off by local police.
“An F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet plunged to the ground in the Rovaniemi airport area,” the Air Force said in a statement.
It later added that the pilot had been taken to a medical facility to be examined and that no one had been injured on the ground.
The Rovaniemi airport remained open, its operator separately said.
Finland has 62 Hornet fighter jets bought between 1992 and 2000. The Nordic country in 2021 decided to replace them with Lockheed Martin F-35 fighters.
JAKARTA – A 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck off Indonesia’s western North Sumatra province on Wednesday, the country’s Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency reported.
Previously, the agency released the magnitude at 5.4 before downgrading it.
The tremors occurred at 14:09 Jakarta time (0709 GMT) with the epicenter located 37 km southwest of West Nias Regency and at a depth of 22 km beneath the seabed.
The strength of the tremors was measured at IV MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) in the regencies of West Nias and South Nias, and III to IV MMI in the regencies of Nias and North Nias, and Gunungsitoli town.
No tsunami warning was issued as the tremors would not potentially generate large waves.
According to Tuahta Ramajaya Saragih, head of North Sumatra’s Disaster Mitigation Agency, the tremors were strongly felt, prompting residents to rush out of houses and office buildings. However, there have been no initial reports of damage or casualties.
Indonesia, an archipelago, is highly earthquake-prone due to its location within the seismically active “Pacific Ring of Fire”.
MUZAFFARABAD – Residents of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, said they fled their homes and ran into surrounding hills as India launched airstrikes early on Wednesday in a part of the city.
Mosque loudspeakers told people to seek shelter as the ground shook repeatedly and the sounds of explosions reverberated, they said.
“We came outside,” said Muhammad Shair Mir, 46, describing the events of the night. “Then another blast happened. The whole house moved. Everyone got scared, we all evacuated, took our kids and went up (the hill).”
Many people gathered after sunrise near a mosque that had been hit in the strikes, its roof smashed and minaret toppled. Security forces had cordoned off the area.
The district commissioner, a senior local official, said three people were killed near the collapsed mosque. In total, Pakistan’s military said 26 people were killed and 46 wounded in Indian attacks across Pakistan and Pakistani Kashmir.
India launched the strikes early on Wednesday, saying it was targeting “terrorist camps” that served as recruitment centres, launchpads, and indoctrination centres, and housed weapons and training facilities.
Pakistan called it a “blatant act of war” as tensions spiralled between the nuclear-armed rivals after a deadly attack by Islamist gunmen on tourists in Indian Kashmir. It said none of the targeted areas were militant camps.
District officials said that at the Line of Control that divides Pakistani and Indian Kashmir, mortar and light arms fire between the two armies continued into the morning and had killed at least six civilians on the Pakistani side.
Police in Indian Kashmir said at least 10 people were killed and nearly 50 injured there.
In Muzaffarbad, hospitals were operational and some small businesses opened in the morning but schools were closed and examinations cancelled, according to local authorities.
Shair Mir said he and his family spent four hours in the open. Some of his neighbours had gone to hospital with injuries and the rest were shaken, he said.
“This is wrong … poor innocent people, our poor mothers are sick, our sisters are sick .. our houses were rattled, our walls have cracked,” he said.
Pakistan said it had shot down five Indian fighter jets in the worst fighting in more than two decades between the nuclear-armed enemies.
But Indian officials so far have acknowledged only that three jets crashed on their side of divided Kashmir.
The clashing accounts are typical of the archrivals attempts to control the narrative over their ongoing tensions.
Pakistan:
A spokesman for Pakistani military press department ISPR told Reuters: “So far, I can confirm that five Indian aircraft, including three Rafale, one Su-30, one MiG-29 have been shot. And one drone also shot down.”
“I would like to emphasise that all of these engagements have been done as a defensive measure, after these aircraft opened fire on Pakistani territory.” said the official.
He added that all of the Indian aircraft were firing from Indian airspace using long-range weapons.
India:
Four local government sources in Indian Kashmir, however, told Reuters that three fighter jets crashed in India’s Jammu and Kashmir territory.
India has not confirmed the Pakistani reports of shooting down jets.
Here are the nine camps Indian officials said were targeted during ‘Operation Sindoor’:
1. Markaz Subhan Allah, Bahawalpur 2. Markaz Taiba, Muridke 3. Sarjal, Tehra Kalan 4. Mehmoona Joya Facility, Sialkot 5. Markaz Ahle Hadith Barnala, Bhimber 6. Markaz Abbas, Kotli 7. Maskar Raheel Shahid, located in Kotli District 8. Shawai Nallah Cam in Muzaffarabad 9. Markaz Syedna Bilal
MOSCOW – Ukraine attacked Moscow with drones for a third day on Wednesday forcing most of the Russian capital’s airports to close just as Chinese President Xi Jinping was due to arrive to mark the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that Russian air defence units destroyed at least 14 Ukrainian drones from 10 p.m. on Tuesday (1900 GMT) until Wednesday morning.
Moscow’s key airports remained out of operation for most of the night, and Russian national carrier Aeroflot said it was reordering timetables to cope with the disruption.
ISLAMABAD – At least 26 people were killed and 46 others injured after India carried out strikes on six civilian settlements in Pakistan, Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of the Pakistani army, confirmed during a press briefing on Wednesday.
NEW DELHI – At least three Indian jets have crashed in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Wednesday, local newspaper The Hindu said, quoting government sources.
People search for survivors in a crater at the site of an Israeli strike at a UNRWA school housing displaced Palestinians at the Bureij camp for refugees in the central Gaza Strip on May 6, 2025. (AFP)
GAZA CITY – Gaza’s civil defense agency said Wednesday that Israeli strikes on a school sheltering displaced people in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory killed 31 people and wounded dozens, with Israel saying it had targeted Hamas militants.
Gaza civil defense media officer Ahmad Radwan told AFP that a total of 31 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli strikes “on a school sheltering displaced persons” in the Bureij refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military meanwhile said in a statement that its forces had struck a “Hamas command and control center in the central Gaza Strip” which was used “to store weapons.”
The strikes came as Israel drew international condemnation on Tuesday over its plans for an expanded Gaza offensive, as the country’s far-right finance minister called for the Palestinian territory to be “destroyed.”
Nearly all of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced at least once during the war, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
On Tuesday, Hamas dismissed as pointless ceasefire talks with Israel, accusing it of waging a “hunger war” on Gaza.
Israel’s military resumed its offensive on the Gaza Strip in March, ending a two-month truce that saw a surge in aid into the territory and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
ISLAMABAD – At least eight civilians, including a child, were killed and 35 others injured, and two missing early Wednesday after India fired missiles at six locations in Pakistan, said the Pakistani military.
The casualties resulted from the Indian strikes on areas in the Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, said the director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, the media wing of the Pakistan Army.
ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) has shot down another Indian fighter jet in response to overnight airstrikes carried out by India at multiple locations in Pakistan, sources from the Pakistani military said on Wednesday.
This is the third Indian fighter jet that has been shot down in response to the overnight strikes, said the military sources.
