Thousands of children in Gaza have been forced to take on adult responsibilities such as providing food, water and caring for family members injured by Israeli attacks. The UN says this ‘lost generation’ of children needs urgent help to get over the trauma of war.
Who: Ireland vs Portugal
What: UEFA World Cup qualifier, Group F
Where: Aviva Stadium in Dublin, Ireland
When: Thursday at 7:45pm (19:45 GMT)
Click here to follow our live coverage.
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Unbeaten Portugal (3-1-0) will seal direct qualification to the FIFA World Cup 2026 if they beat Ireland in their penultimate Group F fixture at the Aviva Stadium.
Armed with a five-point lead, Roberto Martinez’s team are in the box seat to seal a seventh consecutive appearance at football’s global showpiece.
Ireland (1-1-2), for their part, still have a mathematical chance to keep their World Cup aspirations alive by causing a huge upset on Thursday night against an opponent that is fifth in the FIFA world rankings.
They are currently third in the group – but only a point behind second-placed Hungary with two matches still to play. Ireland last qualified for the World Cup in 2006.
Here is all to know about their Group F return clash:
Scenario 1:
Group leaders Portugal require a win against Ireland to ensure direct World Cup qualification into next year’s tournament, which is being held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
In this scenario, Portugal would have 13 points – an insurmountable lead over the other three teams in the group with just one match remaining.
Scenario 2:
If Portugal were to draw its final two fixtures against Ireland and Armenia, they would also finish top of the Group F standings with 12 points from six matches.
Scenario 3:
If Portugal lose its final two matches against Ireland and Armenia, and Hungary – which currently has five points – wins its final two fixtures against Armenia and Ireland, then Hungary would move top of Group F with 11 points vs Portugal’s 10 points.
If Ireland win their final two games, and Portugal lose their final two games, then the teams would be level on 10 points at the top of the standings with the group winner being decided by goal difference.
All 12 group winners in Europe qualify directly for the World Cup while the runners-up go on to the playoffs for the remaining finals places taking place in March.
Portugal were on the brink of punching their ticket to the World Cup as they led Hungary 2-1 in stoppage time in Lisbon, knowing a win would confirm first place in Group F.
However, Hungary snatched a late draw when Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai finished from close range in injury time.
The teams last played on October 11 in Lisbon.
Portugal’s Ruben Neves scored a stoppage-time goal to snatch a dramatic 1-0 home win in Group F after his teammate Ronaldo had a penalty saved earlier in the match as Ireland threatened to hold the unbeaten hosts to a draw.
Yes. With Portugal on the verge of qualifying for the World Cup, Ronaldo confirmed the tournament in North America will be his swansong on football’s biggest stage.
“Definitely, yes, because I will be 41 years old [at the World Cup],” said Ronaldo, who is also the top scorer in history with 143 international goals.
“I gave everything for football. I’ve been in the game for the last 25 years. I did everything. I have many records in the different scenarios in the clubs and also in the national teams.
“I’m really proud. So let’s enjoy the moment, live the moment.”
This is only the 18th meeting between the European sides with Portugal winning 10 and Ireland winning four.
Ireland’s last win came in a friendly in 2005, courtesy of Andy O’Brien’s solitary strike in Dublin. There have been four subsequent matches, of which Portugal have won three.
Ireland’s last competitive win against Portugal came in a European Championships qualifier in 1995.
The fixture dates back to 1946 and began with a 3-1 home win for Portugal in a friendly.
W-W-W-W-D (most recent result last)
D-D-L-L-W (most recent result last)
Chelsea winger Pedro Neto has withdrawn from Martinez’s squad after he suffered a groin injury in his side’s 3-0 Premier League victory over Wolves on Saturday. Rafael Leao is the most likely replacement for Neto.
Sporting Lisbon midfielder Pedro Goncalves is also out for a month after an undisclosed injury playing against Santa Clara on the weekend.
“[I’m] out of these next two games and not being able to be present in the World Cup qualifiers. Something I always dreamed of was representing the National Team, and not being able to go hurts. Now it’s time to recover properly, even though I’m not doing what I love the most! Thank you to the team for the effort until the end! We still have a lot to achieve,” Goncalves wrote on social media.
Ronaldo, who has yet to score away to Ireland in four career meetings, will lead the line for Portugal.
In a big blow to Ireland’s chances, star striker Evan Ferguson is out of the Portugal fixture with an ankle issue and is in doubt for their final World Cup match against Hungary, which may decide who finishes second in Group F.
Manager Heimir Hallgrimsson will also be without three other injured regulars in the squad: Callum O’Dowda (minor knock), Mark Sykes (shin) and Sammie Szmodics (knee).
Ryan Manning and Jayson Molumby are serving one match suspensions.
Ireland: Kelleher (goalkeeper); O’Brien, O’Shea, Collins; Coleman, Cullen, Taylor, Johnston; Ebosele, Azaz; Parrott
Portugal: Costa (goalkeeper); Cancelo, Dias, Inacio, Mendes; Fernandes, Vitinha, Neves, Bernardo, Ronaldo, Leao
Hallgrimsson:
“If Armenia wins or there is a draw, a win in Hungary is enough for us, so that is two of four scenarios for us,” the Ireland manager said.
“If Hungary win, we need at least a draw, but if they win by two or three goals, we will need a draw [against Portugal] and win by maybe three goals away in Hungary.
“We will know what we need in this game against Portugal before we kick off, which is a benefit to us, but it doesn’t change how we start and play the game, but may need to take calculated risks as the game progresses.”
Martinez:
“November is always a difficult stage. Even so, our focus is on qualifying for the World Cup. … We have to improve, especially in the final 20 minutes of games,” Portugal’s manager said.
Kyiv, Ukraine – Pro-Moscow sympathies, corruption and multimillion-dollar embezzlement, reported ties to Ukrainian, Greek and Italian mobsters and the orchestration of assaults on almost a dozen anticorruption whistleblowers.
That is just an abridged list of the accusations Gennadiy Trukhanov has faced since 2014, when he was elected mayor of Odesa, the nation’s third-largest city and home to its largest seaport and the naval headquarters.
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The 60-year-old former military officer and martial arts enthusiast has faced corruption-related arrests in 2018 and investigations in 2023. The latest case involves an “illegal takeover” of government-owned land for real estate development that cost $16.5m, according to Ukraine’s anticorruption prosecutors.
On October 14, the political drama intensified.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to strip Trukhanov of Ukrainian citizenship after a scan of the mayor’s allegedly Russian passport was published by Ukrainian intelligence.
Trukhanov denied having Russian citizenship, although a Panama Papers leak years ago appeared to show that he had one – and used it to register offshore companies.
Two days after losing his Ukrainian citizenship, Trukhanov was fired as part of what some observers call a turf war between central and regional authorities caused by the provisions of martial law, conflicting jurisdictions and Kyiv’s push to rein in unruly politicians in front-line regions.
“Trukhanov has long had a serious conflict with political and ideological opponents; they considered him ideologically dangerous and warred with him for years,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera.
Russia has not commented on the incident.
At the time of publishing, Trukhanov had not responded to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
During a news conference on October 15, he said he never held a Russian passport.
“It’s a moral execution. They just executed me,” he told the journalists.
He is under house arrest and is fighting to restore his citizenship.
On Wednesday, another row with a top official rocked Ukraine as Zelenskyy suspended Herman Haluschenko as justice minister for his presumed involvement in a corruption scandal in the energy industry.
The scandal involved Zelenskyy’s former business partner, who is said to have profited from kickbacks paid by companies that wanted contracts with Energoatom, the state-run monopoly that manages all of Ukraine’s nuclear power stations, according to anticorruption prosecutors and media reports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has long wanted to seize Odesa, one of the Soviet era’s most cosmopolitan hubs. It is known as a writer’s city, has a literary museum and is famed for music and an absurdist sense of humour that helps Ukrainians cope with the war.
In 2014, a Moscow-backed separatist uprising threatened the city as clashes killed about 50 people. In 2022, Russian troops tried to take over the city of one million. Today, lethal missiles and drones bring terror to Odesa as the war rages on, while the port’s operations are regularly disrupted.
After the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2022 occupation of Ukraine’s ports on the Sea of Azov, the city became a lifeline maritime export route for Ukraine’s grain and steel.
Trukhanov stayed on as mayor after Zelenskyy came to power on an anticorruption ticket in 2019.
Activists in Odesa have claimed Trukhanov allowed corruption and crime to prevail in the years before Zelenskyy’s presidency began.
In 2018, Transparency International Ukraine listed a dozen attacks on activists and “politically exposed persons” in the city as it published a letter signed by civil society representatives calling for action.
In 2019, anticorruption activist Mykhailo Kuzakon told Al Jazeera, “It was Trukhanov’s goons”, as he described how a truck allegedly sped up to run him over near his house in Odesa. He survived the incident, which took place a year earlier, but his colleague’s car was destroyed. During the interview, Kuzakon, the head of the Narodny Rukh (People’s Movement) anticorruption organisation, was wearing a bulletproof vest and had two government-provided bodyguards next to him.
Investigations into the attack on him and other activists did not conclude that Trukhanov was involved after key witnesses refused to testify and evidence went missing.
Kyiv had been afraid of possible protest rallies that could follow Trukhanov’s sacking, according to Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, until a tragic calamity provided a useful excuse.
On October 1, torrential rains flooded Odesa, damaging hundreds of buildings and killing 11, including a child. Critics said the disaster highlighted the Trukhanov administration’s failure to build an effective drainage system despite perennial warnings.
And for the rest of Ukraine, Zelenskyy’s administration “reanimated the story with [Trukhanov’s Russian] passport that is 15 years old and that didn’t stop [the mayor] from effectively managing Odesa during the three-and-a-half years of war,” Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.
Some Odesans agree.
“Everybody has known for years that Trukhanov had a Russian passport. Everybody has known about his ties to the mob and his hand in every pie,” Oleh, a 43-year-old Odesa native who withheld his last name as he fears for his safety, told Al Jazeera. “He was sacked because only now Zelenskyy is strong enough to get him out of the game.”
In 1998, Italian police described Trukhanov as part of a mafia group suspected of extortion and arms trafficking. Their report said Trukhanov used a Greek passport and was responsible for training gang members in hand-to-hand combat and sniper shooting.
Trukhanov denied the claims but admitted friendship with the people identified as the gang’s leaders.
Others have mixed feelings about Trukhanov’s legacy, crediting him with defending Odesa from Russian forces, but also snubbing the historic centre of the city, founded in 1794.
“Odesa is dirty and shabby. He didn’t take good care of it; [historic] buildings need renovation, trees need a trim,” office manager Zynaida, who moved to Odesa from central Ukraine, told Al Jazeera. She withheld her last name for safety reasons.
Trukhanov will not be replaced by an elected mayor. His 70-year-old deputy, former university professor Ihor Koval, is now acting mayor. Zelenskyy has appointed General Serhiy Lysak as head of Odesa’s military administration.
Lysak is connected to Zelenskyy’s political clan, which mostly consists of figures from the cities of Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih. The group had already tried to gain a foothold in Odesa in 2014, said analyst Mitrokhin.
Trukhanov’s dismissal followed Zelenskyy’s pressure on other powerful heavyweights, including a literal one.
Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion and mayor of Kyiv since 2014, has been embroiled in a power struggle with Zelenskyy for years.
Klitschko disliked Zelenskyy long before the president – a popular comedian, actor and producer – became a politician.
Zelenskyy’s District 95 comic troupe mocked Klitschko, portraying him in their routines as incoherent.
In real life, Klitschko was a close ally of Zelenskyy’s presidential predecessor and main rival, Petro Poroshenko.
In 2023, Zelenskyy accused Klitschko of failing safety measures after a missile attack killed a nine-year-old girl, her mother and their neighbour as they tried to enter a closed-down bomb shelter.
Their feud grew after Zelenskyy’s appointment of “martial law chief” Tymur Tkachenko as head of Kyiv’s military administration in late 2023.
Tkachenko took over some administrative responsibilities, but critics doubted the necessity of such a figure in the city that sits hundreds of kilometres from the front line. When Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russian forces failed to seize Kyiv and withdrew from the region.
The Klitschko and Trukhanov rows could manifest Zelenskyy’s push to quell political opposition “at least” in Ukraine’s south and centre.
“That’s where he sees his electoral base,” analyst Mitrokhin told Al Jazeera.
Scientists have issued alerts for approaching solar or geomagnetic storms, which are set to hit Earth this week and will produce bright, stunning displays of light known as auroras over parts of the United States, Canada and Europe, while also temporarily disrupting some communications.
On Tuesday, forecasters at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said significant geomagnetic disturbances had been recorded in the past few days, specifically in the form of several “coronal mass ejections” (CMEs), which occur when the sun issues bursts of energy. The agency issued a “G4” geomagnetic storm watch signal on a five-level scale, implying that severe storms could be expected.
Some US residents have already shared videos online of northern lights – also known as aurora borealis – which will continue to appear over several US states on Wednesday.
Did you catch the light show between the breaks in the clouds this evening? #NorthernLights
Space Weather Center: https://t.co/M5cIvJxUr1 pic.twitter.com/RiDXgF3BqI
Here’s what we know about the geomagnetic storms and why they occur.
Geomagnetic storms occur when storms on the sun trigger disturbances in the Earth’s magnetic field. A solar storm becomes a geomagnetic storm when it reaches the Earth.
Solar storms can occur in two ways. One way is in the form of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are sudden swellings of gases on the sun that burst from the sun and travel at more than 1 million mph (1.6 million km/h) towards Earth. Depending on how fast they travel, these can reach the Earth anytime between 15 hours and several days.
Solar storms can also emerge in the form of solar flares, which are sudden eruptions of electromagnetic radiation reaching the Earth from the sun. These travel at the speed of light, reaching Earth in approximately eight minutes, and can last for several minutes or even hours.
Both phenomena happen when magnetic fields on the sun realign. They often, but not always, occur together.
While CMEs can appear through solar telescopes as immense clouds of particles being hurled in a single direction, solar flares appear as bright flashes of light moving in multiple directions. As NASA describes it, think of it as the difference between a cannonball shot in one direction and the flash of a muzzle.
The NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center said on Tuesday that at least three CMEs would pass over Earth, most likely between Tuesday and Thursday.
In an update early on Wednesday, the agency noted that two of the CMEs, which first erupted on November 9 and 10, had already impacted Earth. They “packed quite a punch”, Shawn Dahl, a scientist with the agency, said in a video update posted on X.
Dahl said the storms were “profoundly more strong than we anticipated” and that while the agency had initially forecasted a G2-level storm, the storms were two levels stronger, at G4.
A third, energetic CME, moving faster than the others, is now set to hit Earth on Wednesday, approximately at midday Eastern Time (17:00 GMT), the space agency said. That one erupted early on November 11 and caused temporary radio blackouts across Africa and Europe, according to Space.com, a leading space exploration publication.
When strong bursts of energy erupting from the Sun’s surface as solar flares or CMEs hurtle towards Earth, the highly charged particles they carry collide with gases in the Earth’s upper atmosphere and transfer energy to them, causing the gases to glow and resulting in stunning displays of colourful lights, from emerald greens to intense pinks.
Known as aurora borealis, those displays can be seen from the Northern Hemisphere, hence the term “northern lights”. “Southern lights” or aurora australis are displays which can be seen in the Southern Hemisphere, although far fewer people inhabit the areas from which they are visible. The lights are only visible close to the poles because the Earth’s magnetic fields, which are strongest at the poles, guide the sun’s charged particles towards them.
Light displays have become more common in recent months because the sun is currently at the maximum phase of an 11-year activity cycle.
Every 11 years, the sun’s poles swap places, causing intense magnetic activity. This period, called solar maximum, can last for several months. Scientists speculate that the end of the current cycle began last year and will continue at least through to the end of this year.
In May 2024, the strongest geomagnetic storm in two decades hit Earth and caused dazzling light displays across the US, the United Kingdom and Germany.
The northern lights shot with my iPhone (just this second) in Boulder, Colorado. This is a very impressive event! pic.twitter.com/vkHS00PMLt
Several countries have issued aurora alerts, with some residents already reporting brilliant colours in the sky on Tuesday night.
Brightness and visibility usually depend on what time of day the solar bursts arrive in the Earth’s atmosphere and how they interact with it. Experts recommend leaving brightly-lit areas to see the lights better.
According to NOAA, the lights have already appeared or are likely to appear above several areas in the US, including the states of Illinois (Chicago), Colorado, Massachusetts (Boston), Washington (Seattle), California (San Francisco, Los Angeles), Oregon (Portland), Texas (Dallas), Georgia (Atlanta), North Dakota (Bismarck), New York, Wyoming (Cheyenne), North Carolina (Raleigh) and Iowa.
Just keeps going and these are just holding phone in long exposure mode of 3 seconds. Amazing display of Northern Lights captured in Carlow. pic.twitter.com/ws2JQWUcs3
Other sightings are expected or have been reported in
Not directly to humans, because Earth’s atmosphere protects us from radiation.
However, the bursts of energy could temporarily disrupt communication systems, potentially affecting GPS navigation, radio communications, and satellites, including air traffic control radio and satellites in space. The intense activity could also temporarily disrupt power grids.
On rare occasions, solar eruptions can be damaging. A severe solar storm in September 1859 caused sparks and fires in telegraph stations across Europe and North America. Known as the Carrington Event, those storms were the most intense in recorded history.
In August 1972, powerful geomagnetic events caused widespread electric and communications disruptions in the US and accidentally detonated US naval mines positioned in Vietnam.
New Delhi, India – In May after four days of fighting with Pakistan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared “any future act of terror will be treated as an act of war” by his government.
New Delhi had blamed Islamabad for an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir’s Pahalgam in April that killed 25 tourists. Islamabad denied India’s allegations, but in early May, India launched aerial attacks deep inside Pakistani territory, sparking a brief but intense air war in which the South Asian neighbours bombed each other’s military bases.
After four days, they agreed to a ceasefire, but Modi’s comments drew a new red line and a low threshold for future military action against Pakistan.
Then on Monday, India’s capital, New Delhi, was shaken by a large explosion near the Red Fort, the Mughal-era monument that’s a symbol of political power in the world’s most populous nation. At least 13 people were killed and two dozen wounded.
The Indian government is investigating the incident as a “terrorist attack”. The inquiry is being led by the National Investigation Agency, which is mandated to probe “terrorism”-related cases. Authorities have also invoked stringent “counterterrorism” charges in trying to track down those behind the explosion.
“The perpetrators behind [the attack] will not be spared. All those responsible will be brought to justice,” Modi said on Tuesday, speaking at an event in neighbouring Bhutan.
But two days after the blast, Indian political leaders and security officials have not formally described the blast as an act of “terrorism”. And while Pakistan blamed India for a deadly explosion in Islamabad on Tuesday, India has so far studiously avoided accusing Pakistan of being responsible for the blast in New Delhi a day earlier.
Such a response comes even though Indian investigative agencies have traced the trail of the attackers back to Indian-administered Kashmir and established alleged links to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) group, an officer with India’s premier intelligence agency told Al Jazeera.
For a country that in the past has often pointed fingers at Pakistan within hours of attacks on its soil, India’s caution in ascribing blame for Monday’s blast is a break from the norm. It’s a change that experts said India might have inadvertently forced on itself through the high-pitched rhetoric that followed the May clashes.
The low bar that Modi set for military action against Pakistan in the event of future attacks by armed groups means that naming Islamabad as responsible for the New Delhi explosion will automatically stir domestic expectations of an Indian military strike against its neighbour, they said.
“The Indian government painted itself into a corner – a trap of one’s own creation,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a platform that tracks and analyses attacks in South Asia.
“With the declaration that an act of terror is an act of war and no elaboration on this doctrine, now they are confronting the consequences of what they say – a completely foolish position, not even a policy, that is short-sighted for political gains,” Sahni told Al Jazeera.
Hours before the blast shook a crowded market near the Red Fort in Delhi, police from Indian-administered Kashmir had conducted raids in parts of the National Capital Territory and said they busted an “interstate and transnational terror module”.
The module was linked with the banned groups JeM and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH), according to the police. The JeM is a Pakistan-based armed group and has a history of carrying out attacks in India. Its bases were hit by Indian forces during their May attacks in Pakistan. The AGuH is a self-styled Al Qaeda-inspired Kashmiri group of fighters that had broken away from Hizbul Mujahideen, another Pakistan-based group. It was once led by Zakir Musa, a Kashmiri rebel commander, but has been relatively quiet since he was killed in May 2019.
After raids across multiple north Indian states, Kashmiri police said they had recovered a “massive cache of arms, ammunition and explosives”, including nearly 2,900kg (6,393lb) of material to make improvised explosive devices, such as chemicals, electronic circuits and remote controls.
Police also made several arrests, including two Kashmiri medical professionals, while another doctor, Umar Nabi, from southern Kashmir’s Pulwama, allegedly escaped after the initial arrests.
Now, officials in New Delhi are waiting for DNA tests to determine whether Nabi could have been driving the car that exploded outside the Red Fort.
The intelligence official who spoke to Al Jazeera after requesting anonymity said an initial investigation pointed to logistical support from Pakistan-based groups for those behind the Delhi blast. But the actual perpetrators appeared to be “local and self-radicalised, making plans by themselves”, the official said. “We are still looking into how they managed funds for it.”
Limitations of new red lines
Whatever investigators find, India will be hampered in shaping its diplomatic and security response by its reaction to the April attack, analysts said.
Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst based in Washington, DC, said New Delhi was being restricted by its own new doctrine.
“If the government comes out and declares this to be a terrorist attack, there would be significant pressure, both strategic and political, for India to do something big, to do something kinetic,” he said.
Sahni said Modi’s government had also not explained what, in its understanding, would qualify as a “terrorist attack” to fit its post-Pahalgam approach.
“If a terrorist shoots down only one civilian in any attack, is that not an act of terror?” Sahni asked.
“These are mere political statements made for a particular audience within the country,” Sahni said of the Modi government’s policy.
Now with the Delhi blast, the government, he said, was being forced to “confront this reality”.
International ‘heat’
India also took “a lot of heat” for its air raids on Pakistan in May after the Pahalgam attack “because it did not provide any evidence of Islamabad’s involvement”, Kugelman told Al Jazeera. “That made it difficult to sustain the support of the international community throughout the conflict.”
Eventually, he added, that refusal – or failure – to produce any evidence of a Pakistani hand behind the Pahalgam killings helped strengthen Pakistan’s position of portraying India as an aggressor.
So far, Indian authorities have focused their investigation into the Delhi blast on Indian-administered-Kashmir. Since Monday’s explosion, several more people in Kashmir have been arrested, including family members of suspects.
Sheikh Showkat, a political analyst based in Kashmir, said that despite the crackdown in the region, India appeared to have learned lessons from its reactions after the Pahalgam attack. “There is a mature realisation in the Indian establishment that the war leads to losses for everyone involved,” he said.
The May war devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris living along the contested India-Pakistan border. Residents of many villages were displaced, and civilians were killed on both sides.
Avoiding a knee-jerk blame game with Pakistan “allows Indian agencies to evaluate their own response and grip over the situation,” Showkat told Al Jazeera. “Otherwise, blaming Pakistan has also been a way to shed one’s own accountability.”
Then there’s United States President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly insisted that he brokered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May – a claim India has rejected.
Trump said he used the threat of a breakdown in trade ties with the US to coerce India and Pakistan to end their fighting.
India currently faces a steep 50 percent tariff on its exports to the US and is reportedly close to sealing a deal after months of negotiations. On the other hand, Pakistan has seen its relations with the US strengthen as the Trump administration courts its military and political officials on multiple platforms, including at the White House.
Trump was a complicating factor in this equation for both the countries, Kugelman said. Neither nation would want to cross him by appearing to break a deal the US president has touted as one of his signature diplomatic achievements, analysts said.
But it isn’t just Trump.
Harsh Pant, a geopolitics analyst at the New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation, said India’s strategy has “always been avoiding conflict”.
As the largest economy in South Asia, it wants to focus on its development, he said. “It doesn’t suit India to continue to have a conflict, to have to be on a war footing with Pakistan,” Pant told Al Jazeera. ”It damages India economically, damages India strategically because resources that can be put elsewhere will have to be devoted to Pakistan.”
Intelligence success or failure
But Pant disagreed with the view that the new red lines that Modi announced after the May clashes were the main reason India was holding back in naming those it blames for the Delhi blast.
“Before the blast, the agencies were able to nab a few people with quite significant degrees of ammunition, so they can say that the larger plot was unravelled and averted,” Pant said. The incident turned out much differently from what happened in Pahalgam, he pointed out.
“This blast was likely not premeditated. It looks like it was some type of accident,” he said, alluding to suggestions emerging from security officials that the car might have exploded while one of the accused individuals was trying to escape. “And so I think that New Delhi would not want to overdo the way in which it responds.”
That marks a contrast not just with how India has often responded to previous deadly attacks in its cities but also differs sharply with Pakistan’s reaction to a similar incident.
Hours after the Indian government said conspirators behind the Delhi blast would be brought to justice, a suicide bombing jolted Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, killing at least 12 people and wounding 30.
The blast outside a court complex in Islamabad came when the Pakistan military was already focused on rescuing hundreds of cadets held by fighters in a separate incident at a cadet college in Wana, a town in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif immediately blamed India for both the Islamabad and Wana incidents without offering evidence. “Both attacks are the worst examples of Indian state terrorism in the region. It is time for the world to condemn such nefarious conspiracies of India,” he said.
India rejected the allegations.
The attacks in Pakistan come at a time when tensions between it and Taliban-governed Afghanistan are rising. The neighbours engaged in a series of border clashes last month. That fighting came when the Afghan foreign minister was on a maiden India visit, a sign of a growing new alliance between New Delhi and Kabul.
For decades, Pakistan was the Taliban’s primary patron while India viewed the Afghan group as a proxy of Islamabad. Now those roles have shifted with Pakistan accusing the Taliban of furthering Indian goals against Islamabad. Pakistan accuses the Taliban of sheltering the Tehreek-e-Taliban group, which has claimed responsibility for a bulk of the worst armed attacks on Pakistani soil in recent years, though not yet for Tuesday’s suicide bombing.
While accusing India of backing anti-Pakistan armed groups, Islamabad has yet to spell out how it will hit back against New Delhi.