NEW DELHI (AP) — A car explosion near the historic Red Fort in India’s capital on Monday killed eight people and injured at least 19 others, police in New Delhi said.
The blast, which triggered a fire that damaged several vehicles parked nearby, took place near one of the gates of the Red Fort metro station, the fire services said. The cause is being investigated.
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Security officials inspect the scene of a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officers inspect the site of a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officers inspect the scene of a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Officials inspect damaged vehicles at the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officials inspect damaged vehicles at the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officials inspect damaged vehicles at the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Policemen secure the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo)
Ambulances are lined up at the scene after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo)
New Delhi's international airport, metro stations and government buildings were placed on a high security alert after the explosion, the government said.
Om Prakash Gupta, a witness who lives close to the scene, said he was at home when he heard a loud explosion. “I rushed out with my children and saw several vehicles on fire, body parts all over,” he told The Associated Press. He said he saw one body on the windscreen of a car.
A cab driver, who gave his name as just Shahrukh, said he heard a loud explosion. “I came out of the car and started running along with others on the road,” he said.
A former imperial palace, the Red Fort is a major tourist attraction in the Old Delhi section of the city. Local media footage showed damaged vehicles and a police cordon at the site.
Sanjay Tyagi, a spokesman for the city’s police force, told the AP that at least 8 people were killed, and several others injured. “We are investigating the cause of the blast,” he said.
The fire service said the blast injured 19 people, who were being treated at a government hospital.
Images from the scene showed some shattered windowpanes and mangled pieces of vehicles while plumes of fire billowing from the burning cars.
Home Minister Amit Shah told local media that a Hyundai i20 car exploded near a traffic signal close to the Red Fort. He said CCTV footage from cameras in the area will form part of the investigation.
“We are exploring all possibilities and will conduct a thorough investigation, taking all possibilities into account,” Shah said. “All options will be investigated immediately, and we will present the results to the public.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a post on social media site X: “Condolences to those who have lost their loved ones in the blast in Delhi earlier this evening. May the injured recover at the earliest.”
The 17th-century Red Fort monument is one of India’s most high-profile tourist attractions. Located six kilometers (3.7 miles) from the Parliament, it is where Indian prime ministers deliver their annual Independence Day speeches on Aug. 15.
The investigation is being conducted by the National Investigation Agency, India’s federal terror investigating agency, and other agencies.
Security officials inspect the scene of a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officers inspect the site of a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officers inspect the scene of a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Officials inspect damaged vehicles at the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officials inspect damaged vehicles at the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Security officials inspect damaged vehicles at the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
Policemen secure the site after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo)
Ambulances are lined up at the scene after a car explosion near the historic Red Fort in New Delhi, India, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025. (AP Photo)
OSLO, Norway (AP) — The South African-born jurist and former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay, who is currently an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for her efforts to promote peace and international law.
Pillay’s work “is a source of hope and inspiration to all those who seek to bring about a more peaceful world,” said Jørgen Watne Frydnes, Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in announcing her win in Oslo, Norway.
Her win is sure to be seen as a high-profile rebuke to U.S. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who have both rejected the findings of a U.N. commission she led that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Both leaders also have been highly critical of the institutions where Pillay has worked.
While her work has been global in scope, criticism often has been fiercely local, notably in places like Israel and in apartheid-era South Africa as she and peers took on some of the world’s most painful and sensitive legal issues and most vulnerable populations.
Pillay, 85, received the news while attending the Nuremberg Forum, a gathering to discuss international law in Nuremberg, Germany, the location of the trials of Nazi war criminals that helped lay the foundations of international law.
“Firstly, at this venue, your applause means a great deal to me,” she said to a standing ovation. “You know, you don’t want to receive an award, prize or anything unless the public agrees that you deserve this.”
And joking, she added: "But being a lawyer and a judge, I still want to verify this information.”
Pillay chaired the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council. The commission a year ago concluded Israel was responsible for genocide in Gaza with a specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.
The commission also found that the Israeli president, prime minister and former defense minister "have incited the commission of genocide.” Israel, which has refused to cooperate with the commission since it was established in 2021, has strenuously denied the charges.
Pillay has repeatedly rejected accusations from critics who accused her of antisemitism or allegedly turning a blind eye to the Hamas attacks in Israel.
In an interview with the AP last year, she recalled how she worked closely with some Jewish lawyers in the fight against apartheid in her native South Africa and was invited to Israel as the U.N. rights chief from 2008 to 2014.
Pillay’s win brings renewed attention to U.S. President Donald Trump’s ongoing feud with the International Criminal Court. The Trump administration already has sanctioned 13 of the ICC’s staff members, among them key prosecutors and nine judges including the court’s Japanese President Tomoko Akane.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has launched what he called a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court.”
In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, Trump called the court an “out of control institution” and an “anti-American tribunal with no jurisdiction” over the U.S. as he urged member states to quit the “rogue institution immediately.”
There are fears the court as a whole could be sanctioned, a move that could seriously hamper its ability to mete out justice.
The Norwegian committee said it sought to strengthen international law at a time of conflict.
Watne Frydnes said the award was a message to those seeking to undermine "the international rules based system and the institutions.”
“At a time when the number of wars and conflicts is rising, and when judges and institutions of international law are under political attack, the Nobel Committee wishes to issue a reminder that the ability to resolve conflicts without force or violence is dependent on the international rule of law,” the committee wrote in a news release.
“An international legal system in which war criminals are held to account and the victims of abuse see justice served is a precondition for a peaceful world.”
Pillay is currently serving as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice, the highest court of the United Nations, in the ongoing genocide case against Myanmar.
When countries do not have a national on the court’s permanent, 15-judge panel, they can appoint an expert of their choice. Gambia, which launched the proceedings in 2019, selected Pillay when the country accused Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority group.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo received nominations for 287 candidates for this year’s prize, with just over a quarter of them organizations. Experts say the committee typically focuses on the durability of peace, the promotion of international fraternity and the quiet work of institutions that strengthen those goals.
Last year, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve a democratic transition in the South American nation, winning recognition as a woman “who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.”
Machado gave Trump her Nobel medal shortly after the United States ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro. But it was largely a symbolic gesture: the Nobel Committee has said the honor itself cannot be transferred.
Nominations can be made by a select group of people and organizations, including heads of state or politicians serving at a national level, university professors, directors of foreign policy institutes, past Nobel Prize recipients and members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee itself.
Four of this year's Nobels were announced earlier this week. The Nobel for medicine went to three scientists whose work led to a tool that uses light to help unravel how the brain works. The physics award recognized a scientist’s efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos. The chemistry prize recognized two scientists for untangling mysterious mirror images in molecules, a discovery that has been used to develop countless drugs.
Canadian poet, essayist and translator Anne Carson won the literature prize Thursday for “bold and inventive” works that fuse the classical and the modern and blur the boundaries of poetry and prose.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced Monday.
The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.
Dazio reported from Berlin and Lewis reported from Stavanger, Norway.
AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes
FILE - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, center, visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem, Feb. 8, 2011. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner, File)
FILE - Navanethem "Navi" Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaks during a press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Oct. 18, 2012. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay, center, visits Al- Daraj Elementary Co-ed UNRWA school in Gaza City, Feb. 10, 2011. (AP Photo/Adel Hana, File)
The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces the Nobel Peace Prize 2026 at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)
The Chairman of the Nobel Committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes, announces Navanethem Pillay as the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate at the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (Javad Parsa/NTB Scanpix via AP)
FILE - U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights South African Navanethem Pillay prior to the 23rd session of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, May 27, 2013. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - U.N. human rights chief Navanethem Pillay prior to the opening of a session of the Human Rights Council at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, June 18, 2012. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP, File)
FILE - A Nobel diploma and medal are displayed, Dec. 8, 2020, during a ceremony in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)
