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As Sri Lanka celebrated its New Year, the war in Iran was felt

NPR | By Diaa Hadid

Published April 17, 2026 at 5:38 PM EDT

Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka and Hindus marked their New Year on Tuesday. As residents in the capital Colombo celebrated, a war thousands of miles away was making itself felt.

Diaa Hadid

Diaa Hadid chiefly covers Pakistan and Afghanistan for NPR News. She is based in NPR's bureau in Islamabad. There, Hadid and her team were awarded a Murrow in 2019 for hard news for their story on why abortion rates in Pakistan are among the highest in the world.

See stories by Diaa Hadid

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