Around 6:00 p.m. on May 10, two boys sat on a park bench in Sonwar, a quiet neighborhood in Srinagar, Kashmir, speaking in hushed tones. “Sahil, did you hear?” whispered one to the other in Kashmiri. “The tensions between India and Pakistan have finally eased. There won’t be a war anymore. No more fear, no more disturbing news. They just announced a ceasefire on the news. We are safe now. We won’t have to die.”
Kashmir, a region on the northern edge of the Indian subcontinent whose political control has been divided between India and Pakistan since 1947, has been the site of numerous military tensions over the past several decades. But on May 10, the two countries reached a ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, ending what had been the latest major escalation of conflict in the region.
The two friends, filled with hope and relief, bid each other goodbye and walked home, believing they would finally sleep peacefully that night.
But as the clock struck 9:00 p.m., the fragile calm shattered as Pakistan launched drone strikes over Jammu and Kashmir, an Indian union territory made up of the Indian-controlled Kashmir division and a neighboring division called Jammu. In Srinagar—a city which serves as Jammu and Kashmir’s capital during the summer months—locals suddenly awoke to the terrifying roar of gunfire and deafening blasts as the skies above exploded with missiles, drones, anti-aircraft guns, and interceptors lighting up the night. The same scenes were also witnessed in many other parts of Kashmir, as well as the Jammu and Kashmir division’s winter capital, Jammu, and the Indian side of the nearby Punjab region.
Residents in Srinagar rushed to their windows and rooftops, desperate to understand what was unfolding. All they could see and hear were flashes of red streaking across the sky and the relentless bangs of unfamiliar weapons tearing through the night air. In those harrowing hours, they say, Srinagar no longer felt like a city; it felt like a battlefield. Trapped in fear and uncertainty, they could only pray for dawn.
“We thought we would die,” says Shakeela Bano (a pseudonym used to protect her safety). Bano, a housewife from Rawalpora Srinagar, an upscale Kashmiri neighborhood about fifteen minutes from Srinagar Airport, continued, “The house shook. My children were screaming. We thought war had reached our doorstep.”
For generations, Kashmiris have been in headlines, caught between the nuclear-armed nations of India and Pakistan—bearing the brunt of violence from the cross-border conflict and feeling like political pawns.
The latest round of tensions began in late April after gunmen opened fire on a group of tourists in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, killing twenty-six people; India claimed the group responsible was a proxy for Pakistan’s army, which Pakistan denied. After two weeks of resulting border skirmishes, India launched on May 7 a series of strikes on Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir, killing at least thirty-one people.
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A boy receives treatment at a hospital after being injured when an artillery shell struck his house near the Line of Control in Uri in Indian-administered Kashmir, May 7, 2025.
Over the course of four days of intense cross-border fighting between India and Pakistan, more than fifty civilians were killed, dozens injured, and hundreds forced to flee their homes in both Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir. This came despite a renewed ceasefire agreement in February 2021, in which both India and Pakistan agreed to halt cross-border firing along the Line of Control, the de facto border between the Indian- and Pakistan-controlled parts of Kashmir. The tensions in early May led to its sudden collapse.
On the morning of May 10, before the most recent ceasefire was officially announced, hostilities were flaring. Indian air defense units intercepted and destroyed multiple armed Pakistani drones over parts of Jammu and Kashmir, including Srinagar. Similar drone interceptions were reported near the Khasa Cantonment, a military base in Amritsar, as well as areas of other northern regions. The clash culminated in cross-border air strikes that both sides claim were retaliatory. In Kashmiri districts like Jammu, Poonch, Rajouri, Kupwara, and Uri, entire neighborhoods have been reduced to rubble, and once-thriving farmland is now pockmarked with fresh craters—a stark reminder of the conflict’s human and environmental toll.
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Debris lies on a bed inside a residential house in Uri in Indian-administered Kashmir destroyed by artillery shelling, May 9, 2025.
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A damaged house and wall are pictured in Poonch, a district in Indian-administered Kashmir, May 15, 2025.
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The interior of a kitchen in Poonch, a district in Indian-administered Kashmir, lies in ruins after heavy artillery shelling between Indian and Pakistani forces, May 16, 2025.
“Sometimes, we wonder what silence even sounds like because all we have ever known are the sounds of shelling, shouting, and sirens,” says Nighat, a twenty-two-year-old from Poonch. Like several other individuals interviewed for this article, Nighat requested her last name be withheld for safety concerns. “Our fields are marked with craters, our schools shut without warning, and each night we sleep unsure if we will see the morning light.”
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Zubaida, with injuries to her head and face, sits in silence after surviving an artillery shelling that killed her father in their home near the Line of Control in Poonch in Indian-administered Kashmir, May 16, 2025.
In the past, shelling and skirmishes were mostly confined to border districts like Kupwara, Uri, or Rajouri. But what happened the night of May 10 marks a shocking moment in the memory of the Kashmiri people: For the first time, high-grade military equipment like drones and air defense systems were used directly over central Srinagar, a civilian and administrative hub that has historically remained untouched during India-Pakistan hostilities.
On the night of May 10, after the ceasefire agreement was announced, residents throughout Srinagar reported seeing multiple drones like objects hovering in the sky. “They looked like insects from hell,” says Adil, a twenty-nine-year-old local who captured video of drones hovering in his area.
From Gaza to Ukraine, the buzz of unmanned aerial vehicles has become synonymous with surveillance and sudden death. While Kashmir is one of the world’s most militarized environments, Kashmiris have not seen such a dire situation in decades.
“We thought we would die,” says Zubair, a Srinagar resident. “We are thankful the drones were shot down and we were saved.”
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Villagers from Uri wait for transportation as they flee the border town in Indian-administered Kashmir, May 8, 2025.
While neither the Indian nor the Pakistani governments released any statement about the drone activity, the news wire PTI confirmed locals’ reports of having heard explosions and seen drones over the city. Accounts from the ground detailed to The Progressive describe locals’ horror and shock to see such an activity happening for the first time in their lives. The urban setting, the visible scale of firepower, and the direct threat to a densely populated civilian area marked a major escalation from previous conflicts, which were mostly confined to border districts.
As the gunfire and loud bangs roared in through the air, Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah took to X and wrote: “What the hell just happened to the ceasefire? Explosions heard across Srinagar!!!” He continued in another post, “This is no ceasefire. The air defense units in the middle of Srinagar just opened up.” He also shared a video in which red lights were seen moving towards the sky followed by a bang sound.
“It was like the city had turned into a war movie,” says Shuaib Ahmad (a pseudonym used to protect his safety), a student who lives in Srinagar. “Except there was no script and no escape.”
There is still no official explanation for the drone strikes on the evening of May 10, after the ceasefire agreement was signed. Neither India nor Pakistan have declared the agreement null and, since the strikes, there has been a relative calm, with no reported large-scale military engagement.
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An Indian paramilitary soldier stands guard as a Kashmiri man watches his mobile phone along the banks of Dal Lake in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir, May 10, 2025.
But many in Kashmir are skeptical of how long the calm will last. Mohammad Maqbool Khan, an elderly resident of the border district of Uri, says every explosion shakes residents to the core, and every drone overhead is a reminder that death can strike at any moment.
“When our home was hit, it was not just the walls that collapsed, but it was our lives, our memories,” he says. “This was not merely a war of bullets; it was a war on our very existence. We have lived under the shadow of fear for far too long. All we ask for now is peace—a chance to live without the sound of gunfire, and to see our children grow up free from the trauma that has haunted our generations.”
“We were forced to flee our homes and take shelter in a school building,” says Mohammad Ramzan, a resident of Keran, in the Kupwara district. “We left everything behind because of the shelling. We want peace, not more graves.”
As the dust settles, a fragile calm has returned to Srinagar. Kashmiris are left fearing that peace in the region remains unpredictable.
“We are tired of being the collateral damage in political games,” says Mehnaz, a university student in Srinagar. “All we ask is to live without fear and peace. Is that too much?”