Pope Francis has died, the Vatican has announced in a video statement.
The first Latin American leader of the Roman Catholic Church died at the age of 88 at 7:35am (05:35 GMT) on Monday, said Cardinal Kevin Farrell in a statement published by the Vatican on its Telegram channel.
Francis had suffered various ailments in his 12-year papacy, with severe complications in recent weeks after a bout of double pneumonia for which he spent five weeks in hospital.
His death comes one day after a brief appearance before thousands of Catholic pilgrims gathered in St Peter’s Square for the Vatican’s open-air Easter Sunday mass.
Russia unleashed a barrage of missile and drone strikes on Ukraine as a short-lived Easter ceasefire expired.
Russian forces launched 96 drones and three missiles on eastern and southern Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force reported on Monday.
The swift return to major hostilities following a pause declared by Russian President Vladimir Putin comes as the United States struggles to persuade Moscow to agree on a longer-term ceasefire.
The overnight assault targeted Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Cherkasy regions, the Air Force wrote on Telegram. Air defence units intercepted 42 drones and redirected another 47.
No casualties or major damage were immediately reported, although officials in the southern port city of Mykolaiv confirmed missile strikes.
Little encouragement for US brokers
Putin declared an “Easter truce” based on “humanitarian considerations” on Saturday evening, which he said would run for 30 hours until midnight on Sunday.
The announcement came a day after United States President Donald Trump said that Washington would “take a pass” on trying to broker an end to the war should sealing an agreement be delayed much longer.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed the ceasefire declaration as “another attempt by Putin to play with human lives” and countered with an appeal for a longer ceasefire.
“This will show Russia’s true intentions, because 30 hours is enough for headlines, but not for real confidence-building measures. Thirty days can give peace a chance,” he said.
The US Department of State said on Sunday that it would welcome an extension of the temporary pause.
However, by that time, the Kremlin had already said that no such order would be given. The drone and missile barrage followed shortly after the expiration of the truce.
The US administration will gain little encouragement for its bid to broker a sustainable ceasefire from the short truce. Both Moscow and Kyiv have accused one another of numerous violations.
Although no air raid sirens were heard on Sunday, Ukraine reported nearly 3,000 breaches of Russia’s own truce commitment, with the Pokrovsk front seeing the most intense shelling.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said Ukrainian forces fired on Russian positions 444 times during the ceasefire period and launched more than 900 drone attacks. It also reported civilian casualties, although those claims remain unverified.
Stephen Curry scored a game-high 31 points and Jimmy Butler III added 25 as the Golden State Warriors held off the Houston Rockets 95-85 in Game 1 of their Western Conference first-round series.
Curry, who shot 1-for-10 and scored three points in a home loss to the Rockets on April 6, was brilliant on Sunday. He finished 12-for-19 overall, drilled five three-pointers and grabbed six rebounds. Butler added seven rebounds and six assists to his ledger as the visiting Warriors grabbed a 1-0 series lead with Game 2 set for Wednesday in Houston.
Houston reduced a 23-point deficit to 76-73 on an Amen Thompson floater with 6 minutes and 49 seconds left to play. But Curry extended that advantage back to 82-75 with a three-pointer with 5 minutes and 11 seconds remaining. Butler and Brandin Podziemski (14 points, eight rebounds, five assists) kept the Rockets at bay in the closing stages.
The Rockets shot just 39. 1 percent and committed 17 turnovers that the Warriors converted into 25 points. Alperen Sengun posted 26 points and nine rebounds, but Jabari Smith Jr was the first teammate to join him in double figures with 11 points, doing so via a corner three-pointer with 7:34 minutes left.
Jalen Green and Fred VanVleet shot a combined 7-for-34 and totalled 17 points for Houston.
The Rockets were energised early behind Sengun, who had eight points and six rebounds in the first quarter. Houston led 19-12 when Tari Eason converted a steal into a fast-break dunk with 3:20 minutes left, but Curry engineered a brief run to close that gap.
Curry followed his assist to Butler with a pair of drives that pulled the Warriors to within 21-18 entering the second quarter. Butler then supplied the Warriors with their first lead at 24-23 with a free throw at the 9:16 mark of the second quarter, and Golden State later seized its first double-digit advantage with an 11-0 run capped by a Curry reverse layup with 6:08 minutes remaining in the first half.
The Rockets briefly stemmed the tide and pulled to within four points, only for the Warriors to close the half with a 9-0 burst that featured two Curry three-pointers and three points from Butler. Meanwhile, the Rockets missed their final five shots and committed two turnovers during that stretch, entering the intermission trailing 47-34 after shooting 6-of-18 in the second period.
Jimmy Butler III (#10) of the Golden State Warriors attempts a shot against the Houston Rockets in Game 1 of the Western Conference first round NBA playoffs at Toyota Center on April 20, 2025, in Houston, Texas, US [Alex Slitz/Getty Images via AFP]
In earlier first-round matches played on Sunday, the Oklahoma City Thunder destroyed the Memphis Grizzlies 131-80 in the most lopsided Game 1 win in NBA playoff history.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele has proposed a prisoner swap that would see Venezuelans deported from the United States to his country exchanged for “political prisoners” in Venezuela.
In pointed remarks directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Sunday, Bukele suggested the countries reach a “humanitarian agreement” amid Caracas’s demands for the repatriation of Venezuelan deportees.
Bukele said he would be willing to repatriate 252 Venezuelans being held in a Salvadoran maximum security prison in exchange for “an identical number of the thousands of political prisoners that you hold”.
“Unlike our detainees, many of whom have committed murder, others have committed rape, and some have even been arrested multiple times before being deported, your political prisoners have committed no crime. The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud,” Bukele said on X.
Bukele went on to list a number of people being held in Venezuelan prisons, including Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of exiled former Venezuelan presidential candidate Edmundo González, and Corina Parisca, the mother of opposition leader María Corina Machado.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab described Bukele’s proposal as “cynical” and called on his government to provide a complete list of the “hostages” along with “proof of life and a medical report” for each detainee.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has paid about $6m to Bukele’s government to detain accused Venezuelan gang members in El Salvador’s maximum-security Terrorism Confinement Center.
The Trump administration has deported at least 261 migrants accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua and other gangs by controversially invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law that grants the president authority to detain or deport citizens of enemy nations.
US officials have released little evidence to support their claims that the deportees are members of criminal gangs, and media reports based on publicly available information have indicated that only a small minority have criminal records.
Maduro has accused Bukele of being an accomplice to “kidnapping” and called for the deportees to be repatriated to Venezuela.
On Saturday, the US Supreme Court ordered a temporary halt to the deportations of migrants being held in Texas “until further order of this court”.
The 7-2 ruling came after the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency petition asking the court to stop the Trump administration from proceeding with what it said were imminent plans to restart deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration could not continue the deportations without giving migrants a chance to challenge their removal in court.
Diu, India – Boxes of sweets are being passed around as cheers and joy surround Rajeshwari Rama’s brick house, insulated with tin sheets, in the Vanakbara village of Diu, a federally-controlled island along the India-Pakistan coastline near Gujarat state in western India.
Rama’s relatives and friends are talking at the top of their voices as they celebrate the release of her husband, fisherman Mahesh Rama, from the Landhi jail in neighbouring Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi, in February this year.
Among the attendees is Laxmiben Solanki, 36, standing quietly in one corner. She does not taste the sweets. She is only marking her presence there, but remains preoccupied with thoughts of her husband, Premji Solanki.
Premji, 40, has also been in Pakistan’s Landhi jail since December 2022, along with several other Indian fishermen. Their crime: crossing a disputed border in the Arabian Sea, which divides the South Asian nuclear powers and sworn enemies, for fishing.
A fisherman unloads chunks of ice from his boat at Diu port, India [Tarushi Aswani/Al Jazeera]
In February, Pakistan released 22 Indian fishermen who had been imprisoned by Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency between April 2021 and December 2022, while they were fishing off the coast of Gujarat – also the home state of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Three of those released are from Diu, 18 from Gujarat, and the remaining one person from the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
Though India and Pakistan share a heavily militarised land border, their International Maritime Boundary Line in the Arabian Sea is also largely disputed, especially in a zone called Sir Creek, a 96km (60-mile) tidal estuary that separates India’s Gujarat and Pakistan’s Sindh provinces.
It is in this patch that fishermen from both India and Pakistan wander into deeper waters, often without realising they have entered foreign territory. Due to the terrain of the disputed territory, there is no border fencing, with a marshland acting as a natural boundary between the two nations.
Several years and rounds of diplomatic talks between India and Pakistan have not been able to resolve the dispute, which has even seen military tensions between them. In 1999, India shot down a Pakistani aircraft carrying 16 naval officers over the alleged violation of Indian airspace near their maritime border. The incident occurred just a month after the two countries fought a war in Kargil, a snowy district in Indian-administered Kashmir.
On March 17, India’s Ministry of External Affairs revealed that out of 194 Indian fishermen currently imprisoned in Pakistan, 123 are from Gujarat. According to the Indian government, it has 81 Pakistani fishermen in its custody. Families on both sides say their loved ones have been jailed for a crime they committed “unknowingly” – because they did not know they had ventured inside waters claimed by another country.
Trapped in debt
Pakistan released Mauji Nathubhai Bamaniya, 55, in February because his osteoporosis had gotten worse. “I still can’t believe that I am sitting in my house, in my country, with my family. My decaying bones brought me back to my homeland,” Bamaniya tells Al Jazeera in Vanakbar village.
Another fisherman, Ashok Kumar Solanki, is also back at home in Ghoghla village in Diu. He has hearing and speaking impairments and was among the 22 fishermen released on health grounds.
Family members of Indian fishermen jailed in Pakistan sit outside a house in Diu [Tarushi Aswani/Al Jazeera]
But it is the families of those still imprisoned in Pakistan that find themselves caught in a cycle of recurring debt and debilitating anxiety.
In another house, hidden amid palm trees in Vanakbara, Kantaben Chunilal, 60, looks with tired eyes at the dusty path leading to her home. She has been waiting for her son, Jashvant, since December 2022.
Jashvant was barely 17 when he was arrested by Pakistani forces. He was the family’s sole breadwinner.
Kantaben says she feels too ashamed to ask her relatives for more loans to fill the empty grain jars in her kitchen. She has borrowed nearly 500,000 rupees ($5,855) from several relatives for sustenance. “The government offers us a financial aid of $3 per day. It is not even half of what our men would earn,” she tells Al Jazeera.
Out of desperation, Kantaben says she sometimes randomly visits relatives during mealtimes, hoping they will accommodate her as a guest and she may save some money that day.
In the same village, Aratiben Chavda married fisherman Alpesh Chavda in 2020. Less than a year later, Alpesh was arrested by Pakistani forces while he was out fishing in the Sir Creek area.
Aratiben tells Al Jazeera their 3-year-old son Kriansh, born about four months after Alpesh’s arrest, has never seen his father. “We make him see his father’s photos, so that one day, when Alpesh comes back, my child can recognise him,” she says, sobbing.
Aratiben’s house is shaded by palm and coconut trees, insulating her and her son from India’s scorching heat. But there is no escaping the poverty that has gripped the household. Selling the refrigerator her parents had given her as a wedding gift supported her for about two months during the winter of 2023.
Aratiben and her mother-in-law, Jayaben, also sell vegetables at the local market, making about $5 to $7 on good days. But she says there are too many days in between when they are unable to afford two meals.
Fishing boats at Diu’s port, India [Tarushi Aswani/Al Jazeera]
Indian activists and fishermen’s unions have been campaigning for the release of all the fishermen imprisoned by Pakistan.
Chhaganbhai Bamania, a social worker in Diu, points out that under Pakistani law, fishermen who stray into that country’s waters should not be sentenced for more than six months.
“But due to the hostility between India and Pakistan, citizens are caught in a crossfire for no fault of theirs. Their jail time is increased without them knowing or understanding it,” he says, adding that some Indian fishermen end up spending years behind bars.
Bamania says families of jailed fishermen have been writing to top Indian officials to plead for their release, but accuses the government of moving at a “snail’s pace” to try and address their concerns.
‘As if we were terrorists’
This pattern of arrests followed by a long wait for release is not new. Some, like 50-year-old Shyamjibhai Ramji, are repeat visitors to Pakistani jails.
Ramji was arrested three times between 2000 and 2014. When he was released for a third time from a Karachi jail, his son made him swear he would never venture into the sea, “not even in his dreams or rather, nightmares”.
“Catching fish is all I know,” he says. “We follow the stars’ movements while casting nets into the sea at night. Once, I wandered away from Okha Port, once from Porbandar Port. There are many like me who have been jailed more than once,” he tells Al Jazeera, referring to two prominent seaports in Gujarat.
Ramji says he now prefers looking at the sea from a distance to avoid revisiting the “horrors” he faced in Pakistani custody. “They would keep us separately, away from Pakistani prisoners, and kept asking us the same questions, as if we were terrorists or like we were hiding something. When we said we are vegetarians, they gave us grass and boiled water for food. It was a nightmare every day,” he says.
Shekhar Sinha, a retired Indian Navy officer, says the “greed of a larger catch drives fishermen to go beyond that imaginary line on water, often losing track of their exact position”.
“Even Pakistani fishermen are arrested in similar circumstances. Generally, they are exchanged, except for those who fail during interrogations and are unable to answer questions properly,” he tells Al Jazeera.
As efforts to free civilians on both sides of the border continue, women like Laxmiben hold onto hope, making a new promise to their children every day. Her eyes glisten with tears as she and her three teenage children – a son aged 18 and daughters who are 14 and 13 – await Premji’s release.
“I keep telling my children that, ‘Your father will return tomorrow’. But that tomorrow has not happened for four years now. My tongue is tired of lying,” she says as she holds the hands of her elder daughter, Jigna, both looking at the waves hitting the Diu port.
At least three blasts were heard in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine amid an Easter ceasefire declared by Moscow, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing local “operative services. ”
Ukraine’s forces reported nearly 3,000 violations of Russia’s own ceasefire pledge, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv’s forces were instructed to mirror the Russian Army’s actions.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said Ukraine had broken the Easter ceasefire declared by the Kremlin more than a thousand times, claiming that Ukrainian forces shot at Russian positions 444 times. The ministry also said Kremlin forces encountered more than 900 Ukrainian drone attacks during this time.
The ministry also said Moscow took control of the village of Novomykhailivka, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, before the Easter ceasefire. Ukraine’s authorities are yet to comment on this claim.
Oil and gas
Ukraine may need to import up to 6. 3 billion cubic metres of gas for the 2025-26 winter season due to record low levels of reserves because of war-related damage to some facilities, said Sergiy Makogon, the former head of Kyiv’s gas transit operator.
Ceasefire
Zelenskyy said the Russian Army made attempts to “advance and inflict losses” on Kyiv’s army overnight despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of an Easter ceasefire. “Either Putin does not have full control over his army or the situation in Russia is that they have no intention of making a genuine move towards ending the war,” Zelenskyy said.
The United States Department of State said it would welcome the extension of the Easter ceasefire. However, the Kremlin said earlier there was no order for an extension.
Zelenskyy proposed suspending drone, cruise missile and rocket attacks on civilian targets for at least 30 days, after Russia revealed there were no orders to extend the ceasefire.
