‘Kashmir is no longer safe for Kashmiris’: Life amid the threat of nuclear war

‘The soldiers think we are their enemies now,’ one Kashmiri tells Adam Withnall

Soldiers stand guard in Srinagar (Adam Withnall/The Independent)

When the first fighter jets tore through the sky over his home in Srinagar, Kashmir, 50-year-old Mohammad Yusuf knew immediately that something was very wrong.

As a maths teacher, Mr Yusuf has worked at schools no more than 10km (six miles) from the “Line of Control”, the de facto border agreed by India and Pakistan between their respective territories in Kashmir.

Yet until last week he had never heard the roar of jets flying low overhead, never mind in Srinagar itself – the summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state, and a picturesque city well away from the border where the two countries regularly exchange shelling and gunfire.