At least six people have been killed and about 80 others were injured in a crowd crush at a temple in the western Indian state of Goa where tens of thousands of Hindu worshippers had assembled, officials said.
The incident happened on Friday night as thousands of devotees thronged narrow lanes leading to the Hindu temple in Goa’s Shirgao village, some 40km (24 miles) from the state capital of Panaji.
People had gathered during the annual Shri Lairai Zatra festival at the Sree Lairai Devi temple, which is popular for events including firewalking rituals, during which devotees walk barefoot over a bed of burning coals to seek blessings.
According to a report by the Press Trust of India news agency, people standing on a slope near the temple fell over, pushing more people to fall onto each other, Director General of Police Alok Kumar said.
Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened by the tragic stampede”. He visited the hospital and said that “all possible support” would be given to the families of those killed or injured.
Vishwajit Rane, Goa state’s health minister, said “approximately 80” people were injured. “Five are critical and on ventilator support, while the remaining are being treated in the specially created emergency ward,” he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office expressed “condolences to those who lost their loved ones”. “The local administration is assisting those affected,” Modi said on social media.
Deadly crushes occur regularly at religious festivals across India, where large crowds often gather in small areas.
In January, at least 30 people were killed and many more were injured as tens of thousands of Hindus rushed to bathe in a sacred river at India’s massive Maha Kumbh festival, the world’s largest religious gathering, in the northern Uttar Pradesh state.
In July last year, at least 116 people died, most of them women and children, when a crowd of thousands at a religious gathering in northern India surged at a tent camp in Hathras town in the same state.
India and Pakistan are in danger of a military conflict, with Pakistan and Pakistan standing on the verge of a standoff after 11 days when gunmen killed 26 people in the picturesque Baisaran valley in Indian-administered Kashmir.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have each announced a series of tit-for-tat steps against the other since the attack on April 22, which India has implicitly blamed Pakistan for, even as Islamabad has denied any role in the killings.
India has withdrawn from the Indus Waters Treaty, which establishes a water-sharing arrangement for Pakistan. A previous ceasefire line between them in Kashmir, a disputed region that they both claim in its entirety, was recognized as a Line of Control (LoC) by both countries in the 1972 Simla Agreement, which threatened to force Pakistan to withdraw from the agreement. Both nations have also expelled each other’s citizens and scaled back their diplomatic missions.
Despite a ceasefire agreement in place since 2021, the most recent upheaval follows a 40-person fatal attack on Indian soldiers in Pulwama, in Indian-administered Kashmir, that India launched air strikes on Pakistani soil in 2019. They have recently exchanged fire across the LoC.
And the region is now on edge, amid growing expectations that India might launch a military operation against Pakistan this time too.
However, both nations have also spoken with their counterparts diplomatically. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pleaded with S Jaishankar and Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, to find a de-escalation on Wednesday. US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh, on Thursday to condemn the attack and offered “strong support” to India.
Sharif met with China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, three of Pakistan’s allies, to ask for their assistance. He also urged the two Gulf countries’ ambassadors to “impress upon India to de-escalate and defuse tensions.”
Moeed Yusuf, a Pakistani national security adviser (NSA) under former prime minister Imran Khan, spoke with Al Jazeera to understand how Pakistani strategists who have worked on ties with India view what might come next.
Prior to his role as NSA, Yusuf also worked as a special adviser to Khan on matters related to national security starting in December 2019, four months after the Indian government, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revoked the special status of Indian-administered Kashmir.
On May 2, 2025, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, left, and the Saudi Arabian ambassador Nawaf bin Saeed Al-Maliky met in Islamabad.
Yusuf, who is based in Lahore, is currently the vice chancellor of a private university and the author of and editor of several books on regional security and South Asia. His most recent book, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: US Crisis Management in South Asia, was published in 2018.
Al Jazeera: How would you rate the actions taken by both sides so far in the crisis?
Moeed Yusuf: Pakistan and India have long struggled with managing crises. They don’t have a bilateral crisis management mechanism, which is the fundamental concern.
Relying on third parties as the main crisis management tool has been used by both parties, with the intention of preventing both parties from escalating the situation and preventing it from escalation.
The issue that India has encountered this time is that they have followed the old rules, but that the United States’ leader hasn’t campaigned in its place.
It appears that they have so far taken a neutral and a hands-off position, as indicated by President Donald Trump few days ago. Trump claimed to be aware of the leaders of both India and Pakistan and that he believed they could resolve the conflict alone.
Both Pakistan and India have historically been at odds with one another, and that is how it has historically been. This time too, a number of punitive steps have been announced.
Even when things improve, and they may wish to do so, these are simple to set in motion but very difficult to reverse.
Unfortunately, in every situation where they are at odds with one another, the retaliatory measures are getting more and more significant, as India has decided to suspend the Indus Water Treaty, which is against the law because it doesn’t have any provisions in it.
Al Jazeera: Do you believe a strike is imminent and if both sides are indicating preparedness for a showdown?
Yusuf: It’s impossible to say in such a situation. India’s plan of action is still possible and plausible, but the time has come to consider imminent events.
What usually happens in crises is that countries pick up troop or logistics movements, or their allies inform them, or they rely on ground intelligence to determine what might happen. These can occasionally be misinterpreted, leading to misreading them for the offensive side to believe an attack might be coming when it isn’t, or for the defensive side to believe otherwise.
Pakistan must show unwavering commitment to take any chance. You don’t know what will come next, so you have to be ready.
Despite that, I don’t believe we will have a major war, but one misinterpretation or miscalculation can result in significant things.
Al Jazeera: How do you feel about the US, China, and the Gulf States’ involvement in this crisis, and how would you compare it to earlier ones?
Yusuf: My last book, Brokering Peace (2018) was on the third-party management in Pakistan-India context, and this is such a vital element for both as they have internalised and built it into their calculus that a third-party country will inevitably come in.
Instead of escalating further, the idea is that a third-party mediator will intervene and the two countries will agree to stop because that is what they really want.
Since the 1999 Kargil War, the United States has dominated the group of third-party nations. (Pakistani forces crossed the LoC to try to take control of strategic heights in Ladakh’s Kargil, but India eventually managed to take back the territory. Bill Clinton, then-US president, is credited with putting an end to that conflict.
Everyone else supports the US position, which places the need for immediate de-escalation above all else during the crisis, including China.
This changed somewhat in the 2016 surgical strikes and 2019 Pulwama crisis when the US leaned heavily on India’s side, perhaps unwittingly even emboldening them to act in 2019.
After 19 Indian soldiers were killed in an attack on an army base in Uri, Indian-administered Kashmir, Indian troops launched a cross-border “surgical strike” that New Delhi claimed targeted armed fighters planning to attack India. After the attack on the Indian military convoy that left 40 soldiers dead, Indian fighter jets bombed what New Delhi claimed were “terrorists”‘ bases in Balakot, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. India and Pakistan then engaged in an aerial dogfight, and an Indian pilot was captured and subsequently returned.)
However, this time, the White House has a president who turned around and instructed both Pakistan and India to figure it out for themselves.
Because of Pakistan, they had previously discounted the possibility of significant US support, believing they had become too close to India as a result of their strategic relationship, which I believe has hurt them more than Pakistan.
But India would have been hoping for the Americans to put their foot down and pressure Pakistan, which did not exactly materialise. The secretary of state Marco Rubio is being called once more to urge both countries to end their war.
What they have done has, oddly enough, still contributed to India’s situation so far, given that, until now, they didn’t feel as pressured to act as they might have during Pulwama in 2019.
Gulf countries have played a more active role than before. China has also made a restraint statement.
Since 2014, when India’s relations with Pakistan have remained strained, has Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi been in power?Abdul Saboor/AP Photo
Al Jazeera: How has Pakistan’s relationship with India evolved in recent years?
Yusuf: The relationship between the two nations has undergone a radical change. Despite serious issues and India’s unilateral actions in Kashmir in 2019, we witnessed both back-channel negotiations and a ceasefire agreement.
We have tried to move ahead and reduce India’s incentive to destabilise Pakistan, but I think India has lost that opportunity due to its own intransigence, hubris and an ideological bent that continues to force them to demean and threaten Pakistan.
The leadership there is now convinced that the restraint policy was unsuccessful, and India has mishandled and abused Pakistan’s offers for dialogue.
Pakistan shouldn’t be pleading either if India doesn’t want to talk. If India does reach out, we will likely respond, but there isn’t any desperation in Pakistan at all.
For either nation, this is not a pleasant place to live. I’ve long held the conviction that improving their relationship will ultimately help Pakistan get where we want to go economically and India get where it says it wants to go regionally. For now, though, with the current Indian attitude, unfortunately, I see little hope.
Al Jazeera: Do you anticipate any direct India-Pakistan discussions occurring during or after this crisis?
Yes, I’m not sure when or with whom it will be, but I believe one of the most important lessons that Indians could learn is that trying to isolate Pakistan is ineffective.
Indus Water Treaty in abeyance? Potential suspension of the SIMLA Agreement The two nations will need to talk through these important decisions, and I believe they will do so at some point in the future.
But I also don’t think that Pakistan will make a move towards rapprochement, as we have offered opportunities for dialogues so many times recently to no avail. As I mentioned, Pakistan’s attitude toward this issue has also gotten worse.
In the end, Indians must ultimately choose whether or not to talk. If they come forth, I think Pakistan will still respond positively to it.
According to The Washington Post, US President Donald Trump’s administration is considering making significant personnel cuts at key government departments like the CIA and other important US spy agencies.
The CIA plans to eliminate 1,200 positions in the US intelligence community, along with thousands more, according to a report released on Friday.
According to the report, members of Congress have been informed of the planned cuts, which will occur over a number of years and be primarily accomplished through hiring reductions rather than layoffs.
The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, “is moving quickly to ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the administration’s national security priorities,” a spokesperson for the organization said when asked about the report.
The spokesperson added that “these actions are a part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position CIA to fulfill its mission.”
Ratcliffe, a Trump appointee, sworn in as the agency’s director in January, previously promised lawmakers that the agency would “produce insightful, objective, all-source analysis without allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgment or infect our products.”
No matter how dark or difficult it may be, “we will gather intelligence, especially human intelligence,” he declared, as well as “conduct covert action under the president’s direction, going places no one else can go, and doing things no one else can do.”
When he addressed CIA officers, he said, “Belize and get ready to make a difference if all of this sounds like what you signed up for.” If not, then it’s time to start a new line of work.
As part of Trump’s government’s downsizing strategy, the CIA also announced in March that it would fire an undetermined number of junior officers.
Not everyone who demonstrates aptitude for the job will be able to handle the demands of the job, according to a spokesperson for the organization. Officers with behavioral issues or those who are deemed to be poor candidates for intelligence work will be fired.
Following the announcement last month that a second military zone belonged to New Mexico along the border, the US military has added a Texas area where troops can temporarily detain trespassers.
President Donald Trump has increased troop levels at the southern border, pledged to deport millions of Americans, and announced the creation of a new military camp as a result of his aggressive anti-immigration crackdown on immigration.
Children who are citizens of the United States were some of the people the Trump administration deported.
A 100-kilometer (63-mile) strip east of the Texas-New Mexico border in El Paso, the US military announced late on Thursday that it had established the “Texas National Defense Area.”
The detainees will then be handed over to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or another civilian law enforcement, which has authority over illegal border crossings, according to the Pentagon.
A 270km-long, 18-meter-wide (60 feet by 170 miles) strip along New Mexico’s base was designated a “National Defense Area” by the Trump administration in April.
According to the US Attorney’s Office, 82 people have been charged with entering the New Mexico military zone so far. None of them were detained by US forces, and CBP officials handled them.
Without violating the 1807 Insurrection Act, which allows a president to deploy the US military only to suppress civil unrest, the Trump administration is authorized to use its military forces to detain migrants in the military zones.
At the border with Mexico, about 11, 900 US soldiers are currently stationed. The number of migrants who were caught entering the US illegally in March was at its lowest level ever, according to government data.
Republican governor of Texas Gregg Abbott wrote, “Texas continues to work with the Trump Administration to stop illegal immigration,” on Thursday, posting images of a razor wire barrier construction on the border.
Abbott has border security deployed the state’s National Guard and police since 2021.
Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico has opposed what she has referred to as a “deportation buffer zone.”
On Saturday, May 3, 2018, this is the current situation:
Fighting
A fallen attack drone detonated as a victim attempted to carry it away from a residential home, killing a resident in the southern Kherson region of Ukraine.
Eight of the injured, according to Terekhov, were receiving hospital treatment, including an 11-year-old child who was one of the injured in the most recent Russian attack.
After escorting Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region, which is located just across the border from western Russia, Russia claimed that its forces were still constructing a “security strip” in the Sumy region of Ukraine.
After Russian airstrikes struck Zaporizhzhia, a city in southern Ukraine, more than 20 people were hurt.
In a joint Russian drone and artillery attack on areas east of Nikopol city in the southeast of the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Ukrainian regional authorities, four people were also hurt.
According to the Ministry of Defense of Russia, its air defense units detonated ten Ukrainian drones in an hour. Eight drones were intercepted over Bryansk, a border region, and two over Crimea, which were both seized by Russia.
Russian air defense units reportedly detonated Ukrainian drones over five districts, according to Yury Slyusar, acting governor of the region of Rostov in the eastern border of Ukraine. He claimed that while some homes were harmed by the destroyed drones, there were no injuries.
The SBU, a top internal security agency in Ukraine, accused Russian intelligence of behind the failed gun attack that injured the target and injured prominent Ukrainian blogger Serhii Sternenko.
military assistance
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president, criticizes the most recent wave of drone strikes on Ukrainian civilian areas, and accuses the country’s allies of acting too slowly to improve its air defense capabilities.
According to the Pentagon, the US Department of State has approved the potential sale of F-16 training and sustainment for $ 310 million to Ukraine. The sale might include maintenance and upgrades to aircraft, as well as flight training.
Sanctions
diplomacy and politics
On Monday, to mark the 80th anniversary of World War II’s end of fighting on the continent, Ukrainian armed forces will march in a British military procession.
A district judge in the United States has overturned a president’s executive order that targeted Perkins Coie for its handling of Hillary Clinton, the attorney firm’s Democratic presidential rival.
Judge Beryl A. Howell declared the executive order unconstitutional on Friday in a five-page order issued in Washington, DC.
According to Howell, “Executive Order 14230 is unlawful, null, and void in its entirety, and should not be disregarded.”
One of the executive orders Trump has issued against a law firm is permanently invalid with the ruling. His administration is anticipated to file an appeal.
The Trump administration must resume its “ordinary course of business” with the government in accordance with Judge Howell’s order, which also requires the government to end any investigations into Perkins Coie.
Judge Howell outlined her justification in her full 102-page decision, stating that Trump’s executive order was an “unprecedented attack” on the country’s “foundational principles.”
In her opening statement, she said, “No American President has ever issued executive orders like the one that is in this lawsuit.” This action is inspired by a playbook as old as Shakespeare, which says, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
She continued, “Let’s kill the lawyers I don’t like,” in a fresh way by Trump’s executive order.
On March 6, Trump published Executive Order 14230 with the title “Addressing Risks from Perkins Coie LLP.”
The executive order, which cited the law firm’s cooperation with Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, placed restrictions on its access to government buildings, and mandated that organizations abide by Perkins Coie’s contract terminations whenever possible.
Executive orders also targeted a number of other law firms, including Jenner & Block, Paul Weiss, and WilmerHale. Many of the people had worked for Trump-affiliated organizations or had directly endorsed his policies.
However, it was questioned whether those orders were constitutional because the president had the power to revoke services, security clearances, and even building access because he had a disagreement with one law firm.
Critics argued that the US Constitution’s First Amendment shields individuals and businesses from being subject to reprisals for their free speech. The Fifth and Sixth Amendments, in contrast, safeguard the right to legal counsel from law offices like Perkins Coie.
Many of the clients of the law firm had cases with deep ties to the government’s internal operations. In its filings, Perkins Coie even stated that its attorneys “necessarily interact with the federal government on behalf of their clients.”
In light of the restrictions imposed by the executive order, some of its clients began to consider working with Perkins Coie.
More than 500 law firms signed an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie in April, arguing that Trump’s actions “would threaten the survival of any law firm” and “would scare away clients.
Judge Howell’s ruling supported those concerns, stating that the law firm had “shown monetary harm sufficient to establish irreparable harm.” She referred to the executive order as an “overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints.”
However, several well-known law firms made the decision to break with the White House in order to avoid such punitive action.
Paul Weiss, who reportedly offered the administration $40 million in pro bono legal services, was the first to strike a deal. Following suit, firms Skadden, Milbank, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher each agreed to provide free legal services worth $100 million.
Judge Howell argued in her ruling that Trump’s executive orders against law firms could have a chilling impact on the entire field and were equivalent to a power grab.
She wrote that removing lawyers as the body of law’s guardians removes a significant barrier to gaining more authority.
According to her, the Constitution requires that the government “repairs” disputed speech or ideas with “tolerance, not coercion” in response.
