Strong blasts were heard across the city of Srinagar in India-administered Kashmir just hours after a ceasefire was announced between India and Pakistan.
“What the hell just happened to the ceasefire? Explosions heard across Srinagar,” Omar Abdullah, chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, said in a post on X.
A CNN stringer reported a host of explosions on Saturday evening local time followed by a blackout. The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear.
Then, out of the blue, President Donald Trump on Saturday said the US had brokered an end to the fighting. On his Truth Social platform, he made the surprise announcement that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire — all the more unexpected as, just days before, Vice President JD Vance insisted the conflict was “fundamentally, none of our business.”
But escalating attacks deep inside Indian and Pakistani territory seem to have focused minds. Just hours before, India had struck Pakistani military bases, provoking a furious retaliation from Pakistan, which launched rockets, artillery and drone strikes on dozens of locations in India.
There are conflicting accounts of how the ceasefire was negotiated. While Islamabad praised US involvement, New Delhi downplayed it, saying the neighbors had worked together “directly” on the truce.
Whatever the US role was exactly, the White House was probably pushing on an open door. It is in neither India’s nor Pakistan’s interest for the conflict, sparked by a terror attack in disputed Kashmir last month, to continue.
The truce is also exactly the kind of quick deal Trump hoped he could secure elsewhere, such as in Ukraine, where conflict has been dragging on for nearly three and a half years. In comparison, the most recently intensified fighting between India and Pakistan seems to be over after just three and a half days.
US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said that the ceasefire reached between India and Pakistan was a result of several conversations between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance over the past 48 hours between top officials in each country.
“It was a beautiful partnership,” Bruce said on News Nation. “This was the result of the Vice President JD Vance, of course, this entire government moving through the vision and implementing the insight and vision of President Trump along with of course, my guy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.”
What India and Pakistan say: India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, however, did not mention US involvement when announcing the agreement, and an Indian statement said the deal was worked out “directly” between the two countries. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump claimed this morning that the ceasefire was brokered by the US.
But a Pakistani government source familiar with the negotiations told CNN that the US — and Rubio in particular — played a crucial role in getting both sides to agree.
“It’s been a long 48 hours, but this is the point of what we do,” Bruce continued. “Multiple phone calls at multiple levels with each government were had, certainly with the prime ministers over this period of time. Back-and-forth conversations and both, again JD Vance, our vice president, and the secretary of state clearly making a difference.”
“We look forward to hopefully managing more conversations and having this endure,” she added.
