An order was lifted on Saturday to confine around 160,000 people in Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region after a fire at an industrial estate caused a toxic cloud of chlorine over a wide area, the regional government said.
The blaze at a swimming pool cleaning products company started at 2.20 a.m. local time (8:20 p.m. Friday ET) in Vilanova i la Geltru, a town 48 kilometers (30 miles) south of Barcelona and caused a huge plume of chlorine smoke over the area.
Authorities had told people in the affected zone to stay at home, but hours later lifted the order.
“If you are in the zone that is affected do not leave your home or your place of work,” the Civil Protection service said on social media site X.
No one has been hurt in the fire, Catalan emergency services said on Saturday, but residents in five towns were sent a message on their mobile phones telling them to remain inside.
“It is very difficult for chlorine to catch fire, but when it does so it is very hard to put it out,” the owner of the industrial property, Jorge Vinuales Alonso, told local radio station Rac1.
He said the cause of the fire might have been a lithium battery.
Trains which were due to pass through the area were held up, roads were blocked and other events were canceled.
The fire was under control, Civil Protection spokesperson Joan Ramon Cabello told the TVE television channel.
India-Pakistan ceasefire appears to hold after accusations of violations
A ceasefire between India and Pakistan appears to have held overnight into Sunday, after the two nations accused each other of “violations” just hours after a deal was reached.
Days of cross-border military strikes had preceded the US-brokered deal, marking the worst military confrontation between the two rivals in decades.
US President Donald Trump praised India and Pakistan’s leaders for agreeing the ceasefire in fresh comments on Sunday morning, saying millions of people could have died without it.
This comes after explosions were heard in Indian-administered Kashmir hours after the deal was announced, with both sides accusing each other of violations.
The use of drones, missiles and artillery started when India struck targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, in response to a deadly militant attack in Pahalgam last month. Pakistan denies any involvement.
US President Donald Trump announced the “full and immediate” ceasefire on his Truth Social Platform on Saturday. He said it had been brokered by the US.
Pakistan’s foreign minister later confirmed the agreement had been reached by the two countries, adding that “three dozen countries” were involved in the diplomacy.
But hours after the announcement, residents – and BBC reporters – in the main Indian-administered Kashmiri cities of Srinagar and Jammu reported hearing explosions and seeing flashes in the sky.
Indian Foreign Secretary Misri accused Pakistan of “repeated violations” of the deal, and said his country’s armed forces would give “an appropriate response”.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Pakistan remained committed to implementing the deal, “notwithstanding the violations being committed by India in some areas”, and said troops on the ground should “exercise restraint”.
Kashmir is claimed in full by both India and Pakistan, but administered only in part by each since they were partitioned following independence from the UK in 1947.
It has been a flashpoint between the two nuclear-armed nations and they have fought two wars over it.
Confirming the ceasefire, India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar said the two nations had “worked out an understanding on stoppage of firing and military action”.
“India has consistently maintained a firm and uncompromising stance against terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. It will continue to do so,” he added.
Later, in an address to the nation, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the ceasefire had been reached “for the benefit of everybody”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said following the announcement that India and Pakistan had agreed to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site.
He said he and US Vice-President JD Vance had spent 48 hours with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including their respective Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif.
In a further Truth Social post yesterday, Trump repeated praise for India and Pakistan’s leaders for understanding it was “time to stop the current aggression”.
“I am proud that the USA was able to help you arrive at this historic and heroic decision,” he added.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he welcomed “all efforts to de-escalate the conflict”.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK has been “engaged” in talks for “some days”, with Foreign Secretary David Lammy speaking to both sides.
“I’m pleased to see today that there’s a ceasefire,” Sir Keir said. “The task now is to make sure that that is enduring and is lasting.”
The recent fighting came after two weeks of tension following the killing of 26 tourists in the resort town of Pahalgam.
Survivors of the 22 April attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, which killed 25 Indians and one Nepali national, said the militants had singled out Hindu men.
The Indian defence ministry said its strikes this week were part of a “commitment” to hold “accountable” those responsible for the attack. Pakistan described them as “unprovoked”.
Pakistan said Indian air strikes and cross-border fire since Wednesday had killed 36 people in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, while India’s army reported at least 21 civilians deaths from Pakistani shelling.
Fighting intensified overnight on Friday, with both countries accusing each other of targeting airbases and other military sites.
How backchannels and US mediators pulled India, Pakistan back from the brink
In a dramatic turn of events, US President Donald Trump took to social media on Saturday to announce that India and Pakistan – after four tense days of cross-border clashes – had agreed to a “full and immediate ceasefire”.
Behind the scenes, US mediators, alongside diplomatic backchannels and regional players, proved critical in pulling the nuclear-armed rivals back from the brink, experts say.
However, hours after a ceasefire deal, India and Pakistan were trading accusations of fresh violations – underscoring its fragility.
India accused Pakistan of “repeated violations” while Pakistan insisted it remained committed to the ceasefire, with its forces showing “responsibility and restraint.”
Before Trump’s ceasefire announcement, India and Pakistan were spiralling towards what many feared could become a full-blown conflict.
After a deadly militant attack killed 26 tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir last month, India launched air strikes inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir – triggering days of aerial clashes, artillery duels and, by Saturday morning, accusations from both sides of missile strikes on each other’s airbases.
The rhetoric escalated sharply, with each country claiming to have inflicted heavy damage while foiling the other’s attacks.
Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, says US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s call to Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir on 9 May “might have been the crucial point”.
“There’s still much we don’t know about the roles of various international actors, but it’s clear over the past three days that at least three countries were working to de-escalate – the US, of course, but also the UK and Saudi Arabia,” she says.
Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar told Pakistani media that “three dozen countries” were involved in the diplomacy – including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the US.
“One question is whether, if this call had come earlier – right after the initial Indian strikes, when Pakistan was already claiming some Indian losses and an off-ramp was available – it might have prevented further escalation,” Ms Madan says.
This isn’t the first time US mediation has helped defuse an India–Pakistan crisis.
In his memoir, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo claimed he was woken up to speak with an unnamed “Indian counterpart”, who feared Pakistan was preparing nuclear weapons during the 2019 standoff.
Former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria later wrote that Pompeo overstated both the risk of nuclear escalation and the US role in calming the conflict.
But diplomats said there is little doubt the US played an important role in defusing the crisis this time.
“The US was the most prominent external player. Last time, Pompeo claimed they averted nuclear war. While they’ll likely exaggerate, they may have played the primary diplomatic role, perhaps amplifying Delhi’s positions in Islamabad,” Mr Bisaria told the BBC on Saturday.
Yet at the outset, the US appeared strikingly standoffish.
As tensions flared, US Vice President JD Vance said on Thursday that the US was not going to get involved in a war that’s “fundamentally none of our business”.
“We can’t control these countries though. Fundamentally, India has its gripes with Pakistan… America can’t tell the Indians to lay down their arms. We can’t tell the Pakistanis to lay down their arms. And so we’re going to continue to pursue this thing through diplomatic channels, ” he said in a television interview.
Meanwhile, President Trump said earlier this week: “I know both [leaders of India and Pakistan] very well, and I want to see them work it out… I want to see them stop, and hopefully they can stop now”.