Thanks for joining us for our live coverage of the aftermath of Tuesday's attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 26 people. It's been a day of escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours. We're pausing this live page, but you can head here for analysis of what's been going on and what might happen in the coming days.

This page was edited by Geeta Pandey and Nikhil Inamdar in London and produced by Zoya Mateen and Sharanya Hrishikesh in Delhi, with contributions from Soutik Biswas, Ayeshea Perera, Aparna Alluri, Joel Guinto, James Chater, Meryl Sebastian, Cherylann Mollan, Nikita Yadav, Neyaz Farooquee, Shafat Farooq, Yogita Limaye, Riyaz Masroor, Majid Jahangir, Ashok Dahal, Azadeh Moshiri, Anbarasan Ethirajan Pinaki Chakraborty, Vikas Pandey, Anahita Sachdev, Antriksha Pathania and Simon Fraser

As we wrap up our live coverage, here’s a quick look at the measures India announced against Pakistan following the deadly attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people.

• Suspension of the landmark Indus Waters Treaty which allowed for the sharing of river waters between the neighbours
• Shutting of a key border crossing with Pakistan that allowed for the movement of people and goods
• Suspension of all visa services for Pakistani nationals
• Declaring military advisers in the Pakistani high commission in Delhi as ‘persona non grata’, ordering them to leave within a week
• Reducing the number of Pakistani diplomats in India to 30 from 55 from 1 May.

In response, Pakistan has hit back with an almost identical set of reciprocal measures against Delhi:

• Rejection of India’s suspension of the water treaty, saying any attempt to stop or divert the water “will be considered as an Act of War"
• Suspension of all visas issued to Indian nationals under an exemption scheme with immediate effect
• Suspension of all bilateral agreements with India
• Reduction in the number of diplomats in the Indian high commission in Islamabad to 30
• Closure of Wagah border with immediate effect
• Closure of Pakistani air space to all Indian-owned or Indian-operated airlines
• Suspension of all trade with India

Image source, Shafat Farooq/BBC

As we have been reporting, people across Indian-administered Kashmir have protested against the Pahalgam killings.

On Thursday, operators of the famed shikaras (canoe-like boats) on Srinagar’s Dal Lake held protests, holding up banners and placards.

Tourists visiting the Kashmir valley often flock to Dal Lake to ride the shikaras.

With the attack likely to hit the arrival of tourists, these boat operators are also dreading the impact on their livelihoods.

Image source, Shafat Farooq/BBC

Image source, Shafat Farooq/BBC

Home Minister Amit Shah and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar have called on President Droupadi Murmu at her residence.

The meeting follows the deadly Pahalgam attack in which 26 people were gunned down.

There has been a complete breakdown of diplomatic relations between India and Pakistan following the attack, with both countries announcing retaliatory action against one another.

Image source, Rashtrapati Bhavan

Lakkoju Srinivas, Tulasi Prasad Nanga
BBC Telugu

Image source, BBC Telugu

The last rites of JS Chandramouli, one of the 26 people killed in Pahalgam, will be held in his home state of Andhra Pradesh today.

Chandramouli, who had recently undergone a bypass surgery, was in Pahalgam on holiday with his family.

“The firing began as he was coming out of a toilet nearby," said his brother-in-law Kumar Raja. "He tried to escape but couldn’t outrun the attackers and was killed. Other people with him survived.”

Chandramouli, a former banker, has two daughters who live in the US and had visited him recently. They are now on their way to India again - for his funeral.

The meadow in Kashmir where the brutal attack took place lies deserted.

On Tuesday, four militants had pumped bullets into tourists gathered there, killing 26 people and injuring others.

The only visitors now are security personnel, who patrol the area with a keen eye.

Here are some photos of the site from today.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

The statement adds that in the absence of any “credible investigation and verifiable evidence”, India’s attempts to link the Pahalgam attack with Pakistan are “frivolous, devoid of rationality and defeat logic”.

It said that Pakistan and its armed forces “remain fully capable and prepared to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Islamabad criticised India’s five-point diplomatic action unveiled yesterday, describing it as "unilateral, unjust, politically motivated, extremely irresponsible and devoid of legal merit" and also announced the following measures in response :

• Suspended all visas issued to Indian nationals under an exemption scheme with immediate effect.
• Reduced the number of diplomats in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad to 30 and asked Indian defence, naval and air advisers to leave Pakistan before 30 April
• Closed its airspace to all Indian-owned or Indian-operated airlines
• Suspended all trade with India

Pakistan’s National Security Committee has responded to India’s retaliatory measures that followed the Pahalgam attacks.

In a strongly worded statement from Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif's office, Islamabad said it rejected the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty by India, adding that any attempt to stop or divert the water “will be considered as an Act of War" and "responded with full force across the complete spectrum of National Power".

It has also decided to put on hold all bilateral agreements with India and said it was closing down the Wagah Border Post with immediate effect.

We have just learnt that India is suspending visa services to Pakistani nationals "with immediate effect".

"All existing valid visas issued by India to Pakistani nationals stand revoked with effect from 27 April 2025," a foreign ministry statement said. "All Pakistani nationals currently in India must leave before the expiry of visas, as now amended," it added.

Medical visas issued to Pakistan citizens will be valid only until 29 April.

The ministry strongly advised Indians against travelling to Pakistan and asked citizens currently there to return at the earliest.

Last night, India had announced a number of retaliatory measures against Pakistan, including cancelling a South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) visa exemption scheme.

Indian-administered Kashmir remains tense two days after the deadly attack that killed 26 people.

On Thursday, shops and businesses in the region started slowly reopening after being shut yesterday in protest.

The BBC's Yogita Limaye reports.

Ashraf Padanna
BBC News, Trivandrum

Image source, Arun Chandrabose/BBC

Grieving relatives and close friends paid emotional tributes to attack victim N Ramachandran in the southern state of Kerala.

Warning: Some readers may find the details below distressing

The 65-year-old was holidaying in Pahalgam with his wife Sheela, daughter Arathi R Menon and her eight-year-old twin sons Kedar and Drupad.

“We were on a trek, watching people zip-lining, bungee jumping, and dressing in traditional Kashmiri attire when we first heard a distant sound. Initially, we didn’t realise it was a gunshot,” Menon says.

“Then we heard another gunshot clearly. I saw someone shooting into the air and told my father it was a terror attack, instructing everyone to lie down. We crawled through a fence to escape,” she said.

Amidst the panic that ensued, Menon says the family was approached by a man who shot her father point blank. “He died instantly.”

“Then he turned to me and hit me on the head with his gun after ensuring my dad was dead. I was holding my father's body tightly and crying as I knew he was dead. My children began to scream. The gunman then left us there and went away,” she said.

“My Kashmiri drivers, Musafir and Sameer, helped me through the ordeal as my brothers would have. They stayed with me until 3am at the mortuary."

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has convened a meeting of the country's National Security Committee to formulate a response to Delhi's diplomatic retaliation following the Pahalgam attacks.

The meeting is under way right now, with Islamabad's top civil and military leadership attending, according to Radio Pakistan.

It said that leaders would be reviewing a response to "India’s hastily taken, impulsive and impractical water measures” after Delhi announced the suspension of a landmark water-sharing treaty with Pakistan.

If you're just joining us, here's a recap:

• PM Modi has promised retribution in his first public comments since the attack. "India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers and we will pursue them to the ends of the Earth," he said, adding that the "terrorists behind the killings, along with their backers, will get a punishment bigger than they can imagine".

• Police have issued a notice naming three of the four suspected gunmen behind the attack, saying two of the men are Pakistani citizens while the third is a local Kashmiri man.
• Around 1,500 people across Kashmir have been detained for questioning, top police sources have told the BBC.
• As bodies of victims arrive in their home states, they are being given emotional farewells by their families and loved ones.
• Meanwhile, reports are coming in from parts of India of Kashmiri students facing harassment in the aftermath of the killings.

• India is to hold an all-party meeting later today to discuss the attack.
• Pakistan is also holding a meeting of its security officials to discuss the attack and its aftermath

Cherylann Mollan
Reporting from Mumbai

Image source, ANI

Calls for a ban on Pakistani actor Fawad Khan's upcoming Bollywood film Abir Gulaal have grown after the attack.

The film is set to release in Indian theatres on 9 May and marks the actor's return to Bollywood after a gap of a few years.

On Thursday, Ashoke Pandit, president of Indian Film and Television Directors' Association, opposed the film's release.

"We, as a federation, have requested [filmmakers] with folded hands to not work with Pakistanis," he told, external NDTV news channel.

Earlier, BN Tiwari, president of the Federation of Western India Cine Employees, had said their union would "not let the film release in India" and that it would take action against the makers if it did.

On Wednesday, Khan put up a story on Instagram condemning the attack in Kashmir, calling it a "heinous" and "horrifying incident". However, that hasn't stopped the tide of anger against his film.

Khan shot to fame in India after he appeared in a film starring Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor in 2014. He stopped working in Bollywood movies in 2016 after relations with Pakistan nosedived in the aftermath of an attack on an Indian army base in Uri in Kashmir.

Films, cultural and sporting events are often impacted when tensions flare up between Delhi and Islamabad.

Footage coming in from different parts of India shows distraught families performing the last rites of their relatives.

The bodies of victims were transported from Indian-administered Kashmir to their home states where large crowds gathered to bid them farewell.

Zainul Abid
BBC Monitoring

Several Indian and international media are reporting claims, external that The Resistance Front (TRF) militant group,which is said to be an offshoot of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, carried out Tuesday's attack.

We have looked at the statement purported to be from them and found it uncharacteristic of previous ones issued by the TRF, in which it has accepted its involvement in several attacks.

The latest statement neither mentions the name TRF nor carries the group’s logo. The group has in the past consistently used its name and logo in statements, external. The latest statement also does not offer details about the nature of the operation or the attackers, as is the norm for jihadist groups when the attackers are alive or at large.

The TRF has not shied away from claiming major attacks against soft targets such as civilians, especially migrant workers from other Indian states and members of the minority Hindu community in Indian-administered Kashmir.

However, the group has also denied attacks widely attributed to it in the past. In June 2024, an attack targeting a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims in Jammu’s Reasi region was widely attributed to the group by local and international media.

But the TRF later issued a statement, denying its link to the attack, external and disowned Jhelum Media House, an outlet that had been putting out statements in its name.

Image source, ANI

Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, has urged Indians to not treat people from the region as their enemies.

“The people [of Kashmir] came out and voiced the same thing: that they were not involved and that the attack was not on their behalf," he said.

“I want to request the people of the country: please don’t think that Kashmiris are your enemies, we are not guilty of it. We have also suffered for the last 35 years.”

Abdullah’s comments came amidst reports that Kashmiris living in other Indian states had faced violence and harassment.

The chief minister extended solidarity to the victims of the Pahalgam attack - to “our 25 guests who came here to enjoy their vacation or that one person from our [Kashmir] valley who sacrificed his life to save the people there”.

Image source, Getty Images

On Wednesday, hundreds of locals attended the funeral of Syed Hussain Shah, 30, a local man who made a living by taking tourists on horse rides.

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah also paid his respects.

Shah was killed in the attack on Tuesday and was the only local man among the 26 victims.

His family and colleagues told, external the Hindu newspaper that Shah died while trying to stop one of the attackers from shooting at tourists.

"My nephew laid down his life in a bid to save others," Shah's uncle told the newspaper.

Shah was the sole breadwinner for his family and is survived by his wife and siblings.

Aamir Peerzada
Reporting from Pahalgam

Top police sources have told the BBC that around 1,500 people across Kashmir have been detained for questioning in connection with the attack.

Sources have also told the BBC that they suspect four militants were involved in the attack, including Indian and foreign nationals.

Police have also announced a reward of 2m rupees [$23,000; £17,600] for anyone offering information about any of the attackers.