The initial talks between the United States and Taliban in Qatar on the release of five of the militant group's prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention center have failed, a media report said on Monday.
The fissures in the Taliban leadership has deepened as a top dissident commander vowed to target Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan chief Baitullah Mehsud, days after a noted tribal militant was gunned down for speaking out against the feared warlord. Turkistan Bhittani, a dissident Taliban militant commander, has spoken out against the leadership of Baitullah.
Pakistan's Ambassador to Afghanistan Tariq Azizuddin, who went missing in February, on Saturday appeared in a video beamed by an Arabic TV channel and said he was being held by the Taliban. The footage aired by Dubai-based Al Arabiya channel showed Azizuddin, his driver Gul Nawaz and guard Amir Sultan surrounded by armed militants.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has invited the Taliban to play a cricket match in a bid to revive a stalled peace process but his remarks were criticised on social media.
A powerful suicide blast ripped through a mosque in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province on Friday, killing at least 52 people and injuring over 50 others gathered to celebrate Prophet Muhammad's birthday, authorities said.
The lawyer of Sarabjit Singh, who is on death row in a Pakistani prison, on Saturday said he had received a death threat from the Taliban for pursuing the case of the Indian national.
Pakistan has said it will not back off from military offensive against militants in North Waziristan in the aftermath of the terror attack at a school in Peshawar that left 141 people, mostly children, dead.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik has rejected offer of a ceasefire by the Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban's spokesman outlined conditions for a ceasefire, which said the country must stop its involvement in the war pitting Afghan insurgents against the Kabul government and refocus on a 'war of revenge' against India.
"US military commanders at several levels of the chain of command indicated that they believe Pakistan and its intelligence agency specifically, the ISI, is directing the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan," California's Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter told the UTSanDiego.com.
Heavily armed Taliban on Friday began pulling out from the strategic Buner town and were returning to their bastion in Swat valley after a deal was brokered by hardline cleric Sufi Mohammed, amid intense global pressure on Pakistan over the presence of militants so close to Islamabad.
The Taliban said the attacker had posed as a peace messenger, the BBC reports.
Taliban militants have established secret hideouts in Karachi and it 'could take the city hostage at any point', according to the Pakistani police. The Special Branch of police has highlighted the presence of Taliban in Karachi in a report submitted to the Sindh government and the provincial police chief.The Taliban have 'huge caches' of weapons and ammunition, the report said.
Top Taliban leader Mullah Omar was sheltered by Pakistan's powerful spy agency Inter-Services intelligence after the outfit's leadership fled from Afghanistan in 2001, according to an email received by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton during her tenure.
The repeated successful raids of the TTP into military establishments underline the poor state of physical security and the likely complicity of insiders with the TTP raiders, says B Raman
Police in Pakistan's commercial hub of Karachi claimed to have nabbed a potential teenage suicide bomber, along with his Taliban handlers, who he said told him that he was promised paradise if he carries out a bombing. Muhammad Saleem, 16, was arrested by the CID along with two Taliban operatives, Sher Rehman and Zainullah from Sohrab Goth area on the outskirts of the city.
Top Taliban commander Usman Punjabi has been killed during in-fighting within militant groups at the North Waziristan Agency in Pakistan.Talking to rediff.com via phone from North Waziristan's Shakir Dawar, a local tribesman said, "Fighting erupted among two groups of the Punjabi Taliban. Usman Punjabi, along with three companions, and two persons from the rival group were killed on the spot." Punjabi was an active member of the Punjabi Taliban.
The Pakistani Taliban on Saturday named Khan Syed Mehsud alias Sajna as its new chief, a day after a US drone strike killed its former leader Hakimullah Mehsud in the lawless North Waziristan tribal region.
The Taliban will soon launch their own "media regulatory authority" to monitor press and TV reports to prevent "false" statements about Islam, a militant spokesman said on Sunday, warning that a second-time violator of its media guidelines will "be executed".
What does the Taliban chief's death means for various stakeholders?
Pakistan on Friday announced it will release former Afghan Taliban deputy chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar on Saturday, meeting a long-standing demand of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to advance peace efforts in the war-ravaged country.
Pakistani Taliban militants based in Afghanistan have threatened fresh attacks in Pakistan that will target anyone supporting the United States and promoting American interests in the region.
Pakistan Peoples Party chief Bhutto, 54, was killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi shortly after she had addressed an election rally on December 27, 2007.
The Russian-made chopper, owned by the provincial government of Punjab, was on its way to Russia on routine maintenance when it suffered unknown technical glitch and had to force land in Azra district of restive Logar province on Thursday.
Pakistani negotiators on Monday cancelled a scheduled meeting with the Taliban after the insurgents claimed they had killed 23 soldiers kidnapped by them in 2010, dealing a severe blow to the fledgling peace process.
This will be probably for the first time since the 9/11 attacks that the representative of a duly elected Afghan government and the Taliban would be meeting face-to-face for peace talks.
The United States on Monday described as 'horrific' the Taliban announcement to ban polio vaccine in the tribal regions of Pakistan unless America stops the drone strikes.
Just two soldiers are known to have survived unscathed after the attack on the base.
Claiming that it was not in "direct conflict" with India, the Taliban has said there was a possibility of reconciliation even as it justified the February 26 Kabul attack on Indians as a "legitimate" action.
After initial hiccups, Pakistani state negotiators and a Taliban-nominated committee met at an undisclosed location on Thursday to frame a roadmap for parleys aimed at ending terrorism and bringing peace to the country.
A Taliban love triangle has led to a burqa-clad woman been executed in Afghanistan with an AK47 with baying villagers cheering in delight, a media report said.
Pakistan is directly helping the Taliban in their fight against the elected government in war-ravaged Afghanistan, a media report said, citing a secret North Atlantic Treaty Organisation document.
The Centre on Saturday ruled out the possibility of holding talks with the Taliban and said that New Delhi will only be dealing with the legitimate government led by President Hamid Karzai.India believes that Taliban is the 'antagonist and not the protagonist' and is also aware of its collusion with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba, said sources. The LeT and the Taliban are specifically targeting Indians and Indian interests in the war-torn country, said sources.
Rejecting the news that its chief Hakimullah Mehsud died in Punjab en route to Karachi for treatment, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) says that Hakimullah never left the tribal belt either for shelter or for medication.
'First they claimed the death of Hakimullah Mehsud in a drone strike followed by Qari Hussain's killing. Such news has become a daily affair and no one believes such reports.'
Police in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said on Monday that an initial probe has suggested that the banned terrorist group Islamic State is behind the suicide attack on a political convention of a hardline Islamist party that killed at least 46 people and injured over 100.
A group of people in Siddharthanagar allegedly rubbed chilli in two boys' anus, gave them petrol injections, and forced them to drink urine, over suspicion of stealing Rs 2,000, police said on Sunday.
The Afghan Taliban have refuted claims that reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar had written a letter to United States President Barack Obama last year, expressing an interest in holding talks. According to the Afghan Taliban, the claims made by some US officials is merely a ploy to divert people's attention from their "powerful position", which they have attained after fighting an almost ten-year-old "successful war".
The Taliban militants, who kidnapped Robin Singh, a Sikh in Peshawar, have demanded a ransom of Canadian $1,25,000 from his family in suburban Brampton in Ontario. The Pakistani Taliban are suspected to be behind the kidnapping, but according to Robin's father Bishan Dass, "I can't say whether they are Taliban. But they are terrorists.'
The Pakistani Taliban confirmed on Tuesday, that its chief Hakimullah Mehsud had died of injuries sustained in a US drone strike, ending weeks of speculation over his fate.Taliban sources based in the Aurakzai tribal region told TV news channels that 28-year-old Mehsud was severely injured in a drone attack in Shaktoi area of North Waziristan Agency on January 14.
Pakistan on Saturday released former Afghan Taliban deputy chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, meeting a long-standing demand of Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to advance peace efforts in the war-ravaged country.
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