POONCH, Jammu and Kashmir—In the early hours of May 7, 12-year-old twins Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima cowered in their family home as the walls around them shook amid heavy shelling. The Pakistan Army had unleashed an intense round of artillery fire nearby, hours after Indian warplanes struck nine locations across the border.
Zain and Urwa sheltered with their parents, Rameez Khan, 43, and his wife, Urusa Khan, 33, at their house in Poonch, a district in Indian-administered Kashmir near the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides the disputed region between India and Pakistan.
The family moved to Poonch, where the twins had started attending school, just two months ago. The city is around 5 miles from their native village of Chandak, and the parents decided to move closer to the new school to avoid daily bus commutes—and for their children’s safety. The twins had recently celebrated their 12th birthday in a rented two-story concrete house in a narrow alley just a few yards away from the school.
From left: Rameez Khan, the twins Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima, and Urusa Khan during Eid at their home. Courtesy of Maria Khan
When a shell hit their neighbor’s house on May 7, the twins called their maternal uncle, Adil Pathan, pleading with him to take them to safety. Pathan left Surankote, 17 miles away, and parked his car outside the alley a few hours later. Urusa held her daughter’s hand and Rameez held his son’s as the parents locked the door to their house.
Pathan was watching his family walk toward him when another shell struck behind them and filled the alley with smoke, splinters, and dust.
“I ran towards them and first found Urwa lying in blood, her legs twitching and shaking, before she died within seconds,” Pathan said. “I picked up Urwa and put her in the car. My sister went looking for Zain and found him in a neighbor’s courtyard after being hit in the abdomen.”
After the blast, Zain had stepped inside the courtyard and collapsed. A neighbor tried to revive him with CPR, but it was too late. Both children were rushed to the hospital in Poonch. After half an hour, Urusa realized her husband was missing.
“Please go back and look for him,” she told her brother. Pathan drove back to the house and found Rameez lying unconscious, surrounded by blood. By the time he was brought to the hospital, the doctors had declared the twins dead.
Shops damaged by an artillery shell in Bhera village along the border on May 9.
Since 1947, India and Pakistan have both claimed the region of Kashmir; over the years, the nuclear-armed neighbors have fought three major wars and experienced multiple clashes. The latest escalation erupted after militants killed 26 civilians in the Pahalgam valley in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22. India accuses Pakistan of supporting the militants who carried out the attack, but Islamabad has denied involvement.
In response to the Pahalgam attack, India launched what it called Operation Sindoor on May 7, conducting airstrikes in Pakistan that New Delhi said targeted “terrorist camps” used to train fighters and plan attacks in Kashmir. Pakistan responded with missile strikes, followed by drone attacks and artillery shelling along the border that struck in Kashmir and beyond, including in the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat.
The latest conflict was the most intense military flare-up between India and Pakistan since February 2019, when India conducted a bombing raid on militant bases in Balakot, Pakistan, following an attack on an Indian police convoy in Pulwama in Indian-administered Kashmir. Amid the India-Pakistan conflict, it is still Kashmir that bears the brunt of bullets, bombs, shells, and now drones. Violence has punctuated the contested region’s history: Since 2019, at least 277 soldiers and 212 civilians have died in 730 reported incidents in Kashmir.
A few months after the 2019 attack, the Indian government revoked Article 370, which had guaranteed Kashmir’s special autonomous status, and launched a crackdown on militancy in the region. At the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government implemented strict policies to suppress political dissent, targeting local political groups, journalists, and civil society leaders.
Sumantra Bose, an Indian political scientist and the author of Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict, said that after 2019, the quiet Kashmir valley resembled that of a graveyard, not a peaceful society. “Following the abrogation of Article 370, the repression was so suffocating that any semblance of political dissent or resistance was crushed,” he said, warning that since the “illusion of peace has shattered, what lies ahead could be far more destabilizing.”
In the latest clash, the Indian border districts of Uri, Rajouri, Poonch, and Akhnoor saw the human cost of mounting tensions. As I traveled across the region this month, villages and towns emptied as people migrated away from the border areas to safer locations. Those who stayed behind said they felt trapped: Many residents who spoke to Foreign Policy said they were caught in a battle between two nuclear-armed powers.
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For Urusa, one shell was enough to destroy her life. At a government medical college in Jammu, 142 miles from home, she was barely able to talk as she sat on a bench wearing a floral shalwar kameez, face mask, and disposable polythene foot covers. Since her husband was brought to the hospital with shrapnel in his liver, ribs, and legs, Urusa had spent her days and nights in the intensive care unit.
“I went to our ancestral village first, buried my children, and came to the hospital to be with my husband,” Urusa said. From Poonch, Rameez was first shifted to Rajouri and then to Jammu. He still didn’t know that his children had been killed.
“He shouldn’t feel that something is wrong. I have to act normal in front of him and not mourn my children. I won’t tell him till he comes out of the hospital,” Urusa said. After regaining consciousness, when Rameez asked about his children, he was told that they were with their grandparents. “Don’t tell them about me—they will get worried,” he told his wife.
In the four days of intense border violence during the latest round of conflict, Poonch witnessed the most casualties and damage. The shelling in India’s border regions killed at least 21 civilians, injured dozens more, and damaged several houses and shops.
Among those killed was 45-year-old Nargis Begum, a cook in a government school in Uri. On May 8, Pakistani drones attacked areas along the border, including the cities of Jammu and Srinagar, but were mostly shot down by India’s air defense system. Panic gripped the area, and Begum decided to flee her village along with her children, but it was too late. As the family was in the car, an artillery shell exploded on the road ahead, injuring Begum and her sister-in-law.
Mohammad Bashir Khan, Begum’s husband, is consoled by relatives at his home in Rajanwani on May 9.
The next day, when I arrived in the village, Begum’s body was being taken to the graveyard for funeral prayers. Her husband, Mohammad Bashir Khan, 58—an employee of the Indian Army’s Project Beacon, which focuses on building and maintaining road networks in Kashmir’s border districts—was sitting in a truck next to the coffin. More than two dozen men walked down a steep hill with Khan to bury his wife amid heavy rain.
“I had told my wife she should move out along with the children as shelling had intensified,” Khan said after the burial. “They left home around 9 p.m. in my brother’s car, and only a mile ahead on the road toward Baramulla town, a shell exploded.” Shrapnel pierced the rear of the car, hitting Begum in the face and neck. Khan’s sister-in-law was also hit; she is being treated at a hospital in Baramulla.
Though U.S. President Donald Trump announced a cease-fire between India and Pakistan on May 10—allowing both countries to claim victory—in villages along the border, debris remains to mark the tragic reminder of the deadly clash.
The cease-fire won’t end decades of hostility, instead bringing only a momentary calm. “Governments fight each other, but it is civilians who are suffering,” said Haji Muzaffar Khan, Begum’s brother-in-law. “Bombs don’t ask you before they hit. Poor people at borders get stuck. When a person is killed, nobody cares. It is a never-healing wound.”
Zaheer Sheikh checks on his uncle’s house on May 11. The home was hit by shells during the attack that killed the twins outside in the alley.
More than 60 civilians died in India’s and Pakistan’s border regions in the latest clash, and many more were forced to evacuate their homes and leave everything behind. “We don’t want to die. There is no bunker or shelter. We left everything at home,” said 48-year-old Nayeer Begum, who was taking her three daughters far away from her native village, near Uri. “The government should have planned where people will go during shelling,” she said.
Most Kashmiris who live near the border have now started to return to their homes, but the trauma of the latest clash will remain etched in their memory. Bose said the cease-fire will serve not as a foundation for peace but as an interlude before the next confrontation.
“Indeed, Modi has described it as a ‘pause,’ and his administration has quietly revised its security doctrine. Now, any major terrorist incident will invite immediate military retaliation from India,” Bose said. Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif described the U.S.-brokered cease-fire as a “new beginning in the resolution of issues that have plagued the region and prevented its journey toward peace, prosperity, and stability.”
Kashmir remains caught in the middle of these opposing views. Pakistan isn’t willing to stop fighting over the region, and India isn’t ready to accept it as a disputed territory.
As the dust settles for now, there is a fragile calm in the region. The borders have fallen silent, and villagers are making their way back home. The wounded are being treated in hospitals. India and Pakistan are celebrating their respective military gains. But the families of those killed must bear the human cost.
