Raja Liaquat Ali Khan, a resident of Keran village in Kupwara district, died of a heart attack on April 26. During his funeral, his brothers and sisters, who have lived across the LoC in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir since 1989, watched from the opposite bank of the 300-foot-wide river, unable to cross and attend in person.

The crossing route, once a short ten-minute walk connecting the two sides, was closed by the Indian government in 2019 after cross-LoC trade and bus services were suspended over security concerns, including allegations of weapons smuggling, narcotics trafficking and fake currency circulation.

A video showing Khan’s siblings waving to the coffin and joining funeral prayers from across the river spread widely on social media, prompting emotional reactions and renewed demands for humanitarian access for divided families.

Ravinder Pandita, president of the All-India Kashmiri Samaj, said many families separated during the militancy of 1989-90 had relied on permit-based crossings introduced during former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s tenure to maintain family ties.

He said those arrangements had remained suspended since 2019 following the Balakot strikes.Local political leaders and residents described the incident as a reminder of the human cost of the Kashmir divide, with many urging authorities to reconsider restrictions for family reunions and funerals.

The ministry said two separate Israeli strikes targeted a truck and a motorbike in the town of Yohmor Al-Shaqeef in Nabatieh district, resulting in four deaths.“Two Israeli enemy strikes, on a truck and a motorbike, in the town of Yohmor Al-Shaqeef in the Nabatieh district killed four people,” the ministry said in a statement.

The latest deaths followed Israeli attacks on Friday that killed six people in the southern areas of Wadi Al-Hujair, Touline, Srifa and Yater, according to Lebanese authorities.The renewed violence came days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced in Washington that the 10-day ceasefire that began on April 17 had been extended by three weeks in an effort to contain further escalation between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah entered the wider regional conflict on March 2 by launching rockets toward Israel, saying it was retaliating for the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, further expanding the Middle East war.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported Israeli artillery shelling across several locations in the south on Saturday, along with what it described as a “violent explosion” in Khiam, a strategic border town east of the frontier with Israel.

The agency has previously accused Israeli forces of systematically destroying homes and civilian structures in Khiam and nearby villages.Israel’s military on Saturday renewed warnings to residents not to return to dozens of villages and towns inside what it calls the “yellow line,” a zone extending around 10 kilometers inside Lebanese territory along much of the southern border.

The army also said it had struck Hezbollah rocket launchers overnight in several areas, describing the operations as part of efforts to prevent renewed militant attacks.

Israeli officials have maintained that military action in southern Lebanon is aimed at neutralizing immediate threats near the border and preventing Hezbollah from re-establishing launch positions close to Israeli communities.

Lebanese authorities say more than 2,490 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since March 2, reflecting the scale of destruction despite repeated ceasefire attempts.On Friday, Hezbollah lawmaker Ali Fayad said the group retained the right to respond to Israeli “aggressions” during the truce and argued that extending the ceasefire “makes no sense” while Israeli military operations continue.

The continued strikes have raised concerns that the fragile truce may collapse entirely, with both sides maintaining military pressure despite diplomatic efforts to prevent a broader regional war.

Defence Minister said ground operations and air strikes had achieved “many gains” but had not fully neutralised Hezbollah’s presence in southern Lebanon. He added that areas between Israel’s declared security zone and the remained uncleared of militants and weapons.
Katz said the remaining objectives could be achieved either through diplomatic channels or renewed military action once the ceasefire expires. Under the terms of the truce, Israel retains the right to act against what it describes as imminent or ongoing threats from Hezbollah.

As the ceasefire came into force at midnight, displaced civilians in southern Lebanon began returning to their homes after weeks of conflict. However, Katz warned that a resumption of fighting would likely force another evacuation of those areas.

Israel has maintained a military presence in parts of southern Lebanon and established a security buffer zone along the border, which it says has been cleared of militant infrastructure and residents. The defence minister said operations would continue to target remaining positions, including structures Israel alleges were used for militant activity.

According to details released by the United States, the ceasefire framework also places responsibility on Lebanon, with international backing, to prevent Hezbollah from launching attacks against Israeli targets.

The developments highlight the fragility of the ceasefire and ongoing tensions along the Israel-Lebanon frontier, where both sides remain on alert despite a temporary halt in fighting.

The Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) said its analysis of satellite imagery and open-source data showed activity “consistent with military assistance” to the RSF at a base in Asosa, in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region, between late December 2025 and late March 2026.The RSF has been engaged in a conflict with Sudan’s army since April 2023.

Sudan’s military had previously accused Ethiopia of allowing drone attacks to be launched from its territory, an allegation Addis Ababa has denied, along with claims it hosts RSF camps.

According to the HRL report, researchers identified repeated arrivals of commercial car carriers at the Asosa base unloading “technicals,” light pickup trucks commonly used by armed groups.

These vehicles were later observed supplying RSF units operating in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.The report said some vehicles were subsequently fitted with mounts capable of carrying heavy machine guns, while objects consistent with .50-calibre weapons were also detected nearby.

Similar vehicles later appeared in open-source imagery from fighting around Al-Kurmuk, a strategic border town approximately 100 km from Asosa.HRL also documented increased logistical activity at the base, including the arrival of shipping containers, fuel tanks and tents capable of housing up to 150 personnel.

Satellite imagery showed expansion at Asosa airport, including a new hangar, concrete pad and defensive positions. The site had previously been used as a drone base.

The findings come as fighting intensifies in Blue Nile state, where an estimated 28,000 people have been displaced this year, including more than 10,000 from Al-Kurmuk alone.

Control of the region remains divided between Sudan’s army and RSF-aligned forces from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, led by Abdelaziz al-Hilu.

In a statement, the army identified the soldier as Sergeant Moshe Yitzchak hacohen Katz, 22, a member of the Paratroopers Brigade’s 890th Battalion, originally from New Haven, Connecticut.

The military said the soldier “fell during combat in southern Lebanon,” without providing further operational details.

The latest casualty comes amid ongoing cross-border exchanges between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, which began launching rocket attacks on March 2. The group said the strikes were in retaliation for the killing of Ali Khamenei, an event that has heightened regional tensions.

Since the escalation began, at least five Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat operations along the northern front, according to military figures.The fighting forms part of a broader escalation involving Israel and Iran-aligned groups across the region, raising concerns of a wider conflict.

Exchanges of fire along the Israel-Lebanon border have intensified, with both sides reporting casualties and continued military activity.

Israel has not disclosed further details regarding the circumstances of the latest incident, and there was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.

A return to the zero-sum mentality that dominated earlier epochs — where Kabul was binary: allied or hostile — will not suffice.

For decades Islamabad regarded Afghanistan as a strategic depth and a zone of influence — a buffer to be shaped, not simply neighboured. That assumption has been upended. What was once a relationship of patronage and leverage has become a volatile adversarial space in which Pakistan’s ability to shape outcomes is eroding fast.

The proximate causes are familiar: the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) resurgence, the Afghan Taliban’s evolving priorities, and renewed regional manoeuvring — but the deeper story is institutional: Pakistan’s coercive and diplomatic instruments have less purchase in Kabul than they did a decade ago, and the result is a dangerous ambiguity for peace along a porous frontier.

The unraveling of influence

Pakistan’s influence was built on long-term ties with elements of the Afghan insurgency, cross-border sanctuaries for proxies and a security apparatus that assumed it could cajole Kabul.

After the Afghan Taliban’s return to power in 2021 Islamabad briefly believed those ties would translate into control over insurgent groups that threaten Pakistan’s internal security, especially the TTP. That belief has been proven increasingly fragile.

Since 2023 and into 2024–25, the TTP has consolidated, carrying out a wave of attacks inside Pakistan and openly operating from Afghan territory, according to Pakistani officials and independent monitors — a reality Islamabad blames on Kabul’s unwillingness or inability to rein in militants.

The rhetoric has hardened into kinetic confrontation. October and November 2025 saw some of the deadliest border clashes since 2021, with both sides trading heavy accusations of cross-border strikes and of harbouring militants.

Pakistan’s military leadership framed the dispute in stark terms: peace depends on the Taliban preventing attacks originating on Afghan soil — an implicit admission that Islamabad’s old levers of influence are no longer decisive.

Kabul, for its part, denies institutional complicity while insisting it is a sovereign government contending with its own domestic pressures and complex local actors.

Analysts have been blunt. “Pakistan misread the Taliban and lost peace on the frontier,” wrote commentators after a string of confrontations, arguing Islamabad had underestimated the Afghan leadership’s need to assert independence from Islamabad and to cultivate alternative patrons and legitimacy.

The practical consequence is a loss of predictive power: Islamabad cannot reliably forecast which militant actors Kabul will tolerate or contest, and therefore cannot control the border dynamics that have long defined its security calculus.

New players, old grievances

The decline of unilateral influence does not mean Pakistan has been entirely sidelined; rather, the relationship has been recalibrated amid a broader regional realignment.

China and Turkey have moved to mediate and cajole, economic corridors and diplomatic initiatives have proliferated, and even India has quietly sought to re-engage with Kabul, reopening channels that complicate Islamabad’s calculations.

These shifts give the Afghan Taliban alternatives for diplomatic engagement and economic cooperation that do not depend on Pakistan’s patronage.

Inside Pakistan, the domestic politics of counter-terrorism and the resurging profile of the Pakistani Taliban have also altered official thinking. Policymakers face a grim choice: assertive military options across the border that risk escalation and international censure, or a patient diplomatic strategy that depends on a Kabul willing and able to act.

The ambiguity has produced episodic violence rather than a durable settlement; ceasefires have been brokered and violated, and confidence-building measures are fragile. Observers note that Islamabad’s traditional tools — patronage networks, cross-border pressure and economic inducements — are necessary but not sufficient to resolve the multi-layered conflicts now playing out.

The human cost is immediate. Civilians on both sides of the Durand Line have borne the brunt of the violence: displacement, disrupted trade and a renewal of mistrust that undercuts any long-term reconciliation.

The border is not simply a line on a map; it is a lived geography of interdependence and grievance. As violence spikes, international actors — from Qatar and Turkey to regional capitals — are scrambling to re-establish mediation channels even as the ground reality resists neat diplomatic fixes.

What comes next

If Pakistan’s grip is slipping, the strategic implication is that South Asia’s security architecture must be rethought. A return to the zero-sum mentality that dominated earlier epochs — where Kabul was binary: allied or hostile — will not suffice.

Instead, any viable approach must accept multiplicity: a Taliban government with agency, non-state militant actors with transnational reach and regional powers willing to assert influence through economic and diplomatic means. This requires Pakistan to invest in multilateral mechanisms, to deepen intelligence and law-enforcement cooperation that respects Afghan sovereignty, and to concede that punitive cross-border strikes are not a sustainable substitute for political solutions.

The stakes transcend bilateral rivalry. A durable peace on the frontier matters to refugee flows, counter-terrorism, narcotics trafficking and the broader stability of a region that is again the focus of great-power competition.

If Islamabad wants to protect its core security interests it must adapt to an Afghan polity that no longer responds predictably to old incentives. That adaptation will be neither quick nor comfortable, but it is necessary: failing to do so will leave both countries mired in a costly oscillation of strikes, reprisals and diplomatic ruptures that benefits no one.

As one regional analyst put it, the old script for influence has been burned; the question for Pakistan is whether it can write a new, more cooperative one before the next conflagration.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Atawi was involved in orchestrating attacks on Israeli forces from Lebanese territory, accusing him of “planning and advancing terrorist activities” targeting soldiers stationed along the northern border.

Atawi, a commander of the group’s armed wing known as the Fajr Forces, was reportedly killed while driving from his residence to his office in the Lebanese capital.

The Fajr Forces had been active during the conflict last year, firing rockets across southern Lebanon into northern Israel. That war, which lasted nearly a year, concluded with a fragile ceasefire agreement. During the fighting, multiple members of the Fajr Forces were killed in Israeli airstrikes.

Despite the ceasefire, Israeli operations have continued across Lebanese territory, primarily targeting Hezbollah militants and weapons depots. Tuesday’s strike marks one of the rare incidents involving Jama’a Islamiya since the truce.

Lebanese authorities, Hezbollah, and Jama’a Islamiya have condemned the ongoing Israeli strikes and the continued occupation of several hilltop positions in southern Lebanon by Israeli troops. They argue such actions violate Lebanon’s sovereignty and the terms of the ceasefire.

Israel maintains that its operations are defensive, aimed at neutralizing threats to its civilian population.

The targeted killing of Atawi is expected to raise tensions along the already volatile Israel-Lebanon border, as regional instability continues to challenge the year-old truce.