Pakistan launched fresh air strikes targeting terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan, killing several people, including three cricketers, casting a shadow over the expected talks in Doha amid a fragile ceasefire that had temporarily halted hostilities between the two sides.
Among the 24 injured are 14 civilians, including women and children, with several said to be in critical condition.
At least 12 persons, including four children, were killed and 30 injured as two explosive-laden vehicles rammed into the boundary wall of the main cantonment in Bannu in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday while the army personnel neutralised at least six terrorists.
A top Taliban commander in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan tribal region has threatened to scrap an unofficial peace deal with the army, citing recurring American drone attacks and demolition carried out by the military in Miranshah.
The 'Shura' or council of a Taliban faction led by Hafiz Gul Bahadur yesterday warned parents not to send their children to five schools near the cantonment in Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan Agency.
Taliban have banned polio vaccination at North Waziristan Agency following the incident of Dr Shakeel Afridi who with the help of fake polio vaccination campaign traced Osama Bin Ladin and his family. The Al Qaeda chief was later on killed by US marines in the garrison city of Abbottabad on May 2, 2011.
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan has said it will continue carrying out suicide attacks and targetting Pakistani security forces despite joining other militant groups in a pledge not to kill innocent people or to resort to kidnappings for ransom.
'Pakistan's only concern has been while they were on the FATF watch list was to distance their State institutions and organs from any direct connection with the actual execution of militancy inside Kashmir.'
Pakistan may want to undertake a 'false flag' operation in J&K to divert attention from the situation in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but infiltrating one SSG battalion into J&K and having two SSG battalions waiting to follow suit means war, which Pakistan cannot afford in its current economic crisis, notes Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (retd).
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