Category: Associated Press

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan and Afghanistan exchanged cross-border attacks overnight in a dramatic escalation of tensions that led Pakistan’s defense minister to say on Friday that the two countries are in a state of “open war.”

Afghanistan launched an attack on Pakistan late Thursday, saying it was in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday. Pakistan then carried out airstrikes in Kabul and two other Afghan provinces early Friday, saying it targeted military installations.

Tensions have been high for months. Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.

A Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting in October, but several rounds of peace talks in Turkey in November failed to produce a lasting agreement. The two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.

Qatar once again appears to be mediating. Its minister of state, Mohammed bin Abdulaziz al-Khulaifi, spoke Friday with the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan in an effort to de-escalate tensions, Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted on X.

Cross-border attack

Afghanistan’s attacks against Pakistani military targets was meant as “a message that our hands can reach their throats and that we will respond to every evil act of Pakistan,” Afghan government spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said. “Pakistan has never sought to resolve problems through dialogue,” he said.

After the Afghan strikes, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif posted on X: “Our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”

Asif said Pakistan had hoped for peace in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO forces in 2021 and expected the Taliban, which seized power in the country, to focus on the welfare of the Afghan people and regional stability.

Instead, he said the Taliban had turned Afghanistan “into a colony of India” — a reference to recently improving ties between India and Afghanistan, including offers of enhanced bilateral trade. Pakistan and neighboring India, both nuclear armed powers, have periodically engaged in wars, clashes and skirmishes since gaining independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

‘Exporting terrorism’

Asif also accused Afghanistan of “exporting terrorism,” an allegation Pakistan frequently levies at its neighbor as militant violence in the country surges. Specifically, Pakistan accuses Afghanistan of supporting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, as well as outlawed Baloch separatist groups.

Pakistan accuses the TTP, which is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, of operating from inside Afghanistan. Both the group and Kabul deny that charge.

“Pakistan’s internal conflict is a purely domestic issue and is not a new one,” Mujahid said Friday, noting the TTP had been active for nearly two decades.

Pakistan has also frequently accused neighboring India of backing the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban, allegations New Delhi denies.

Retaliatory strikes

Afghanistan said its attack Thursday was in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas Sunday.

The governments have issued sharply differing casualty claims.

Pakistan’s army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said Pakistani air and ground operations killed at least 274 members of Afghan forces and affiliated militants and wounded more than 400, while 12 Pakistani soldiers were killed and 27 others were wounded. One Pakistani soldier was missing in action.

Mujahid rejected the claims of the high number of Afghan casualties as “false.” He said that 55 Pakistani soldiers were killed with the bodies of 23 of them taken to Afghanistan. He also said “many” Pakistani soldiers were captured. Thirteen Afghan soldiers had been killed, he said, and another 22 wounded, while 13 civilians were also wounded.

Later on Friday, the Afghan government said that 19 civilians were killed and 26 others injured when Pakistan struck the provinces of Khost and Paktika in southeastern Afghanistan. Deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat accused Pakistan of having “deliberately targeted the residences of ordinary civilians” and said most of the dead and wounded were women and children.

The Afghan government had reported earlier that a religious school in Paktika province was bombed without providing details of casualties.

The claims of either side could not be independently verified.

Pakistan’s air force carried out airstrikes Friday night targeting military installations in Afghanistan’s Laghman province, two senior Pakistani security officials said. They said an arms depot and two key military installations were destroyed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Pakistan’s anti-drone systems shot down several small drones over the northwestern cities of Abbottabad, Swabi, and Nowshera Friday. He said they appeared to be part of a failed attack by the Pakistani Taliban, and there were no casualties. Tarar claimed the drone attacks “once again exposed direct linkages between the Afghan Taliban regime and terrorism in Pakistan.”

International calls for restraint

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan held separate phone calls with his Pakistani, Afghan, Qatari, and Saudi counterparts on Friday to discuss the conflict, a Turkish official said, without providing details on the talks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

In October, Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia had facilitated talks between the sides.

On Friday, Mujahid said Afghanistan had “always emphasized a peaceful solution, and we still want to resolve the problem through dialogue.”

In a statement, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres urged both sides to try to resolve their differences through diplomacy, and to protect civilians.

Russia called for an immediate halt to the fighting and for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, Russian diplomat Zamir Kabulov told news agency RIA Novosti. Kabulov, who is President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for Afghanistan, said that Moscow would consider mediating between the two countries if asked, according to RIA Novosti.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi urged Pakistan and Afghanistan to resolve their differences through dialogue during the holy month of Ramadan. He also said that Tehran was ready to assist in facilitating dialogue.

Refugees at the border

Pakistani authorities said that dozens of Afghan refugees in the Torkham border area had been relocated to safer places.

Pakistan launched a sweeping crackdown in October 2023 to expel migrants without documents, urging those in the country to leave of their own accord to avoid arrest and forcibly expelling others. Iran also began a crackdown on migrants at around the same time.

Since then, millions have crossed the border into Afghanistan, including people who were born in Pakistan decades ago and had built lives and created businesses there.

In 2025, 2.9 million people returned to Afghanistan, the U.N. refugee agency has said, with nearly 80,000 having returned so far this year.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges Friday against 30 more people who are accused of civil rights violations in a January protest inside a Minnesota church where a pastor works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Bondi said on social media that 25 people were in custody and more arrests would follow. The new indictment comes a month after independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong were charged for their alleged roles in the protest at Cities Church in St. Paul.

Bondi accused the group of attacking a house of worship.

“If you do so, you cannot hide from us — we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you,” she wrote on social media.

In total, 39 people now face charges of conspiracy against religious freedom and interfering with the right of religious freedom.

A livestreamed video posted on Facebook shows people interrupting services at Cities Church on Jan. 18 by chanting “ICE out” and “Justice for Renee Good,” a reference to the woman who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.

The new defendants will have an initial court appearance and a magistrate judge will set conditions for their likely release. Lemon and Fort said they were at the church as journalists covering news. Levy Armstrong was the subject of a doctored photo posted by the White House showing her crying during her arrest. The three have pleaded not guilty.

Protesters descended on Cities Church after learning that one of the church’s pastors also serves as an ICE official. The protest drew swift condemnation from Trump administration officials and conservative leaders for disrupting a Sunday service.

The indictment says the “agitators” entered the church in a “coordinated takeover-style attack” and engaged in acts of intimidation and obstruction.

“Young children were left to wonder, as one child put it, if their parents were going to die,” the indictment says.

A lawyer for the church praised the Justice Department for charging more people.

“The First Amendment does not give anyone — regardless of profession, prominence, or politics — license to storm a church and intimidate, threaten, and terrorize families and children worshipping inside,” Doug Wardlow said in a statement.

The revised indictment adds new allegations when compared to the original filed in January.

It says two people “conducted reconnaissance” outside the church a day before the protest and recorded their visit on video, with one saying, “My thoughts are to be able to close up this whole alleyway right here.”

The court filing quotes one protester as chanting in the church, “This ain’t God’s house. This is the house of the devil.”

Levy Armstrong defended the protest shortly after it occurred. She said critics needed to “check their hearts” if they were more concerned about a disruption than the “atrocities that we are experiencing in our community.”

The protest came at a tense time in Minnesota, where the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers for Operation Metro Surge after a series of public fraud cases where the majority of defendants had Somali roots. Officers frequently deployed tear gas for crowd control in neighborhood clashes with residents, often detaining them along with immigrants.

Good, 37, was shot in Minneapolis. In another fatal shooting a week after the church protest, a federal officer killed 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti.

Nationwide demonstrations erupted in response, followed by a change in Operation Metro Surge’s leadership and the eventual wind-down of the immigration enforcement operation. Roughly 400 ICE officers and Homeland Security agents were expected to remain in Minneapolis by early March, down from roughly 3,000 at the peak, according to a court filing.

Since then, the Twin Cities have grappled with the impact to communities and the local economy. Minneapolis said it suffered an impact of $203 million due to the operation, with tens of thousands of residents in need of urgent relief assistance.

Separately, a woman who was at the church service has filed a lawsuit against some people who were charged, alleging emotional trauma and an inability to exercise her religion that day.

NEW YORK — A social media content creator was arrested Thursday after New York City police said he was one of a number of people who pelted officers with snow and ice during a massive snowball fight in Washington Square Park this week.

Gusmane Coulibaly, 27, was charged with obstructing governmental administration, a misdemeanor, and harassment, a non-criminal violation.

He appeared in handcuffs and wearing an olive-green sweat suit during his arraignment Thursday evening in Manhattan criminal court. He wasn’t asked to enter a plea, and was released, pending his next court date on April 9.

Coulibaly didn’t speak during the brief hearing, which was attended by at least a dozen uniformed police officers and police union officials.

But George Vomvolakis, his attorney, told the judge that the “circumstances surrounding his arrest have been politicized.” He suggested Coulibaly was caught in the middle of a rift between the police department and City Hall.

“I don’t want to minimize what happened to the officers, but I think the police department is using this because of their dislike or disdain for the mayor,” Vomvolakis said. “I think they’re taking it out on Mr. Coulibaly. They want to pick a fight with the mayor.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, played down the fracas earlier this week as a “snowball fight that got out of hand” and suggested he did not think criminal charges were warranted.

Monday’s snowball fight, which appeared to be organized by social media content producers, caused a chaotic scene as a large crowd amassed at the popular park to wing snowballs at each other during a winter storm.

Prosecutors said in court that officers arrived at the park after a 911 call about a disorderly group, including people climbing on a roof.

Video from the incident shows a large group of people following police officers, showering them with snowballs and jeering, as they retreat to their vehicles outside the park. Videos also showed officers shoving at least two people to the ground while getting hit from all directions by snowballs.

“The notion that this was a playful snowball fight obviously is not true,” Patrick Hendry, a police union president, told reporters after the proceeding. “This was an attack on the uniform that these police officers wear so proudly every day. They came after these police officers, pelting them with ice, rocks.”

Hendry said he was disappointed prosecutors didn’t charge Coulibaly with assaulting an officer — the felony offense police originally proposed.

“It sends a horrible message to these police officers right here that the mayor is not going to have our backs,” he said, standing alongside other officers. “You’re putting a target on these police officers’ backs.”

Vomvolakis maintained there was no evidence that rocks or ice were packed into the snowballs.

“What I saw in the video didn’t look like an attack,” Vomvolakis said. ”Did it go a little past, you know, jokes and fun? Was it possibly a little disrespectful to the police? Yes.”

Assistant District Attorney Victoria Notaro said video showed Coulibaly throwing a snowball that struck Officer Nicholas Johnson in the face, but prosecutors did not find evidence showing that the officer’s injuries were caused “directly by this defendant’s conduct.”

The officer sustained injuries including redness, tenderness, and pain to his eye, head and neck, Notaro said.

“We will continue to investigate,” she added.

Vomvolakis said Coulibaly is a content creator who makes “elaborate videos” including a recent one in which he approached a stranger in a Bronx subway, acted as if he knew him and said he was owed money.

That interaction got Coulibaly arrested for attempted robbery — a charge that Vomvolakis said he was confident would be dismissed.

Coulibaly has hundreds of thousands of followers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and other social media platforms, where he posts under the moniker Diaper Man.

The city’s police department has released images of three other people it is seeking in connection with the snowball fight. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has called the treatment of officers at the fight “disgraceful” and “criminal.”

CHICAGO — A line of mourners streamed through a Chicago auditorium Thursday to pay final respects to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. as cross-country memorial services began in the city the late civil rights leader called home.

The protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate will lie in repose for two days at the headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition before events in Washington, D.C., and South Carolina, where he was born.

Family members wiped away tears as the casket was brought into the stately brick building. Flowers lined the sidewalks where people waiting to enter watched a large screen playing video excerpts of Jackson’s notable speeches. Some raised their fists in solidarity.

Inside, Jackson’s children, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and the Rev. Al Sharpton were among those who stood by the open casket to shake hands and hug those coming to view the body of Jackson, dressed in a suit and blue shirt and tie.

“The challenge for us is that we’ve got to make sure that all he lived for was not in vain,” Sharpton told reporters. “Dr. King’s dream and Jesse Jackson’s mission now falls on our shoulders. We’ve got to stand up and keep it going.”

Jackson died last week at age 84 after battling a rare neurological disorder that affected his mobility and ability to speak in his later years.

Remembrances have already poured in from around the globe, and several U.S. states, including Minnesota, Iowa, and North Carolina, are flying flags at half-staff in his honor.

But perhaps nowhere has his death been felt as strongly as in the nation’s third-largest city, where Jackson lived for decades and raised his six children, including a son who is a congressman.

Bouquets have been left outside the family’s Tudor-style home on the city’s South Side for days. Public schools have offered condolences, and city trains have used digital screens to display Jackson’s portrait and his well-known mantra, “I am Somebody!”

His causes, both in the United States and abroad, were countless: Advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues including voting rights, job opportunities, education, and healthcare. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through his Rainbow PUSH Coalition, he channeled cries for Black pride and self-determination into corporate boardrooms, pressuring executives to make America a more open and equitable society.

“We honor him, and his hard-earned legacy as a freedom fighter, philosopher, and faithful shepherd of his family and community here in Chicago,” the mayor said in a statement.

Next week, Jackson will lie in honor at the South Carolina Statehouse, followed by public services. According to Rainbow PUSH’s agenda, Gov. Henry McMaster is expected to deliver remarks; however, the governor’s office said Thursday that his participation wasn’t yet confirmed. Jackson spent his childhood and started his activism in South Carolina.

Details on services in Washington have not yet been made public. However, he will not lie in honor at the United States Capitol rotunda after a request for the commemoration was denied by the House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.

The two weeks of events will wrap up next week with a large celebration of life gathering at a Chicago megachurch and finally, homegoing services at the headquarters of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.

Family members said the services will be open to all.

“Our family is overwhelmed and overjoyed by the amazing amount of support being offered by common, ordinary people who our father’s life has come into contact with,” his eldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., said before the services began. “This is a unique opportunity to lay down some of the political rhetoric and to lay down some of the division that deeply divides our country and to reflect upon a man who brought people together.”

The services included prayers from some of the city’s most well-known religious leaders, including Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich. Mourners of all ages — from toddlers in strollers to elderly people in wheelchairs — came to pay respects.

Video clips of his appearances at news conferences, the campaign trail and even Sesame Street also played inside the auditorium.

Claudette Redic, a retiree who lives in Chicago, said her family has respected Jackson, from backing his presidential ambitions to her son getting a scholarship from a program Jackson championed.

“We have generations of support,” she said. “I’m hoping we continue.”

HAVANA — Cuba’s government said late Wednesday that the 10 passengers on a boat that opened fire on its soldiers were armed Cubans living in the U.S. who were trying to infiltrate the island and unleash terrorism.

The announcement came hours after Cuba said its soldiers killed four people and wounded six others aboard a Florida-registered speedboat that had entered Cuban waters and opened fire on the soldiers first, injuring one Cuban officer.

Cuba’s government said the majority of the 10 people on the boat “have a known history of criminal and violent activity.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio had told reporters earlier that he was made aware of the incident and that the U.S. is now gathering its own information to determine if the victims were American citizens or permanent residents.

“We have various different elements of the U.S. government that are trying to identify elements of the story that may not be provided to us now,” Rubio said while at the airport in Basseterre, St. Kitts, where he was attending a regional summit with Caribbean leaders.

The Cuban government identified two of the boat passengers as Amijail Sánchez González and Leordan Enrique Cruz Gómez, who are wanted by Cuban authorities “based on their involvement in the promotion, planning, organization, financing, support or commission of actions carried out in the national territory or in other countries, in connection with acts of terrorism.”

The government said it also had arrested Duniel Hernández Santos, adding that he was “sent from the United States to guarantee the reception of the armed infiltration, who at this time has confessed to his actions.”

The Associated Press was not immediately able to independently verify that information.

Cuba’s government said it obtained the details about the passengers aboard the boat from the suspects detained following the shootout.

It identified seven of the 10 passengers, including Conrado Galindo Sariol, José Manuel Rodríguez Castelló, Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara, and Roberto Álvarez Ávila.

On Thursday, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, said the Cuban government erroneously identified Roberto Azcorra Consuegra as one of the boat passengers late Wednesday. He said Azcorra was not aboard the boat.

Cuba’s government said that one of the four killed was Michel Ortega Casanova.

“The investigation process continues until the facts are fully clarified,” the ministry said in a statement.

Misael Ortega Casanova, brother of Michel Ortega Casanova, told the Associated Press late Wednesday that he was mourning his brother’s death but lamented that he fell into what he called an “obsessive and diabolical” quest for Cuba’s freedom.

“Only us Cubans who have lived over there understand,” Misael Ortega Casanova said, referring to the “great suffering” that he and other Cubans on the island have faced.

He noted that his brother, who was a truck driver and an American citizen who lived for more than 20 years in the U.S., leaves behind his wife, his mother, two sisters — one of whom lives in Cuba — and a daughter who is pregnant.

“No one knew,” Misael said of his brother’s plans. “My mother is devastated.”

He added: “They became so obsessed that they didn’t think about the consequences nor their own lives.”

Misael said that he did not recognize any of the names that the Cuban government released.

He said that while he doesn’t believe in heroes — “because that is ignorance” — he hopes that his brother’s death might be a worthwhile sacrifice: “Maybe it will justify that some day Cuba will be free.”

A ‘highly unusual’ shootout

President Donald Trump’s top diplomat refused to speculate on what happened, saying that it could be a “wide range of things,” and that the U.S. will not solely rely on what the Cuban authorities have provided thus far.

“Suffice it to say, it is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that. It’s not something that happens every day. It’s something, frankly, that hasn’t happened with Cuba in a very long time,” Rubio said.

He said both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard are investigating the incident and stressed that he wants to verify the facts.

“The majority of the facts being publicly reported are those by the information provided by the Cubans. We will verify that independently as we gather more information, and we’ll be prepared to respond accordingly,” Rubio said. “We’re going to have our own information on this. We’re going to figure out exactly what happened.”

He said it was not a U.S. government operation and that he wasn’t “going to speculate about whose boat it was, what they were doing, why they were there, what actually happened.”

One of the men identified by the Cuban government, Conrado Galindo Sariol, was interviewed in June 2025 by Martí Noticias, a U.S.-based news site that has long called for a change of government in Cuba.

Galindo, whom the host called “a legend” and a former political prisoner, was quoted as saying that he wants to support the struggles that Cubans face, especially in the eastern part of the island “to achieve the freedom that is needed.”

He said that the protests in Cuba at that time were “not a spark that’s going to be extinguished.”

“The regime’s leaders are crisscrossing Cuba, trying to mitigate what’s coming very soon because … they know they’re out of power, that they can’t do anything about it, and they’re looking for ways to prevent the protests from growing in other parts of the country,” Galindo was quoted as saying.

Fear over increased tensions

Rubio said he found out about the shooting before the Cuban government posted on social media, noting that the U.S. has “constant contact” with the country “at the Coast Guard level.”

Earlier, Cuba’s Interior Ministry issued a statement that provided few details about the shooting, but noted that the boat was roughly 1 mile northeast of Cayo Falcones, off Cuba’s north coast.

The government provided the boat’s registration number, but the Associated Press was unable to readily verify details of the boat because boat registrations are not public in the state of Florida.

It wasn’t immediately known what the boat and its occupants were doing in Cuban waters. In the statement, the ministry said Cuba’s government was “safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida said it would pursue answers “through every legal and diplomatic channel available,” adding that “facts remain unclear and conflicting.”

Vice President JD Vance said late Wednesday afternoon that Rubio had briefed him on the incident. He added that the White House was monitoring the situation.

“Hopefully it’s not as bad as we fear it could be,” Vance said.

The shooting threatens to increase tensions between the U.S. and Cuba. Following the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump and top administration officials have taken an increasingly aggressive stance toward Cuba, which had been largely kept economically afloat by Venezuela’s oil.

The energy crisis Cuba has been grappling with in recent years entered new extremes last month when Trump signed an executive order that would impose a tariff on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. The move put pressure on Mexico, which Cuba became largely dependent on for petroleum after Trump halted oil shipments from Venezuela.

Meanwhile, James Uthmeier, Florida’s attorney general, said he has ordered prosecutors to work with federal, state and law enforcement partners to start an investigation.

“The Cuban government cannot be trusted, and we will do everything in our power to hold these communists accountable,” he wrote on X.