India to resume border ceremony with Pakistan

Pakistan’s Rangers soldiers, in black, and Indian Border Security Forces soldiers, lower their flags during a daily closing ceremony at the Wagah border near Lahore, Pakistan, on May 3, 2025. (AP/File)
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Updated 20 May 2025
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India to resume border ceremony with Pakistan

  • For years, the ceremony at the Attari-Wagah border has been a popular tourist attraction on both sides
  • Visitors from both nations come to cheer on soldiers goose-stepping in a chest-puffing theatrical show of pageantry

AMRITSAR: India said Tuesday it would resume a daily border ceremony with neighboring Pakistan which it briefly halted earlier this month following the most serious conflict between the nuclear armed arch-rivals for decades.

At least 60 people died in fighting triggered by an April 22 attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir that New Delhi accused Islamabad of backing — a charge Pakistan denies.

India’s Border Security force said the sunset ceremony on its side would be open to the media on Tuesday and to the general public on Wednesday at the Attari-Wagah land border in the northern state of Punjab.

Pakistan said it never stopped the ceremony, with its troops marching on its side of the border alone.

The ceremony however is expected to be a low-key affair with diplomatic measures against Pakistan still in place, including the closure of the land border.

For years, the ceremony at the Attari-Wagah border has been a popular tourist attraction.

Visitors from both sides come to cheer on soldiers goose-stepping in a chest-puffing theatrical show of pageantry.

The frontier was a colonial creation at the violent end of British rule in 1947 which sliced the sub-continent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

The daily border ritual has largely endured over the decades, surviving innumerable diplomatic flare-ups and military skirmishes.


Pakistan police, security forces kill 12 militants in separate operations

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Pakistan police, security forces kill 12 militants in separate operations

  • The operations were conducted in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Karak, Balochistan’s Kalat districts
  • The country is currently battling twin insurgencies in both provinces that border Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s police and security forces have gunned down 12 militants in separate operations in two western provinces that border Afghanistan, authorities said on Sunday.

Police launched an operation in a mountainous area of Karak district in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, following reports of militant presence, according to Karak police spokesman Shaukat Khan.

The operation resulted in the killing of at least eight militants, while several others were wounded in the exchange of fire with law enforcers. Karak police chief Saud Khan led the heavy police contingent alongside personnel from intelligence agencies.

“Several militant hideouts located in the mountainous terrain between Kohat and Karak districts were dismantled during the operation,” Khan told Arab News on Sunday evening, adding the operation was still ongoing.

Separately, security forces killed four “Indian-sponsored” separatist militants in an intelligence-based operation in Kalat district of the southwestern Balochistan province, according to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the Pakistani military’s media wing.

“Weapons, ammunition and explosives were also recovered from the terrorists, who remained actively involved in numerous terrorist activities in the area,” the ISPR said in a statement.

“Sanitization operations are being conducted to eliminate any other Indian sponsored terrorist found in the area.”

Pakistan, which has been facing a surge in militancy, has long accused Afghanistan of allowing its soil and India of backing militant groups, including the TTP, for attacks against Pakistan. Kabul and New Delhi have consistently denied this.