Hakimullah Mehsud-led Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan believes that since all decisions of the Pakistani government are influenced by the army, his organization will only talk with negotiators who represent the military and not the government. Tahir Ali reports
The Pakistani military on Tuesday claimed to have wrested the Taliban stronghold of Sararogha in South Waziristan, where 21 militants and a soldier were killed in fierce clashes over the past 24 hours.
Mehsud blew himself up with a hand grenade when troops surrounded his hideout around 0830 hrs at Zhob, 300 km north of Balochistan provincial capital Quetta.
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.
To attack the financial underpinnings of Taliban militants, the United States on Friday slapped sanctions against a pair of informal money-exchange networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan for alleged terrorist financing.
A "shocked" Pakistani Taliban Thursday confirmed the death of its deputy chief Waliur Rehman in a US drone strike and announced it was withdrawing its offer to hold talks with the new government over the killing.
The TTP, however, did not confirm the death of its chief in the drone strike.
The blast occurred in the mosque in the Police Lines area around 1.40 pm when a suicide bomber present in the front row during the Zuhr (afternoon) prayers blew himself up, security officials said.
The chief minister-designate of the militancy-hit Pakistani province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Friday said his party had "no enmity" with the Taliban and was ready to hold talks with the militants.
At least 75 people were killed and 115 others injured in the attack.
On Friday night, Taliban attackers detonated a car bomb outside the guesthouse and stormed the building, and then exchanged fire with security forces, officials said.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has reportedly released a video apparently showing the severed heads of a dozen Pakistani soldiers.
Pakistan's security forces and its intelligence agency have facilitated the rise of the Taliban, with whom they have an "ambiguous" relationship, a former top American army official, now headed to become the country's representative to Afghanistan has said.
The Taliban on Thursday claimed responsibility for the suicide bomb attack outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul and claimed that the actual toll due to the blast was 17, Al Jazeera channel reported.The channel, quoting the Taliban website, identified the suicide bomber as Khalid.Al Jazeera added that the Afghanistan government and intelligence sources have indicated the involvement of foreign hand in the blast as "planned by a state and not a group of bandits."
She will be visiting her ancestral home in Makan Bagh in Mingora, her school besides inaugurating a girls school in Shangla district.
'It is important to note that American officials were trying their best to use the Taliban for their oil games till December 1997 when Mullah Ghous was invited to America. State Department officials did not show any interest in capturing or killing Osama bin Laden even at that time.'
Pakistani police have arrested three university students in the central city of Multan on charges of having links with the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, officials said on Tuesday.
Pakistan will not initiate a dialogue with the local Taliban unless they lay down their arms and give up terrorism, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said on Friday amid reports of secret negotiations between the government and militant groups.
Pakistani Taliban has warned that the next few days and weeks would be "disastrous" for the country as the banned outfit vowed to "teach" the government and its security agencies a lesson over the killing of its leader Hakimullah Mehsud in a US drone strike.
Facing a major Pakistani offensive, the retreating Taliban militants have carried out the gruesome beheading of a captured police official. The police found the decapitated body of a constable in a town in Swat valley, where for the last three months the Pakistan army is carrying out a flushing operation against the Taliban, officials were quoted by TV channels as saying. They said the police constable was kidnapped a week ago by militants.
The Taliban on Saturday claimed responsibility for the 'attack' in Binghamton, New York, where a gunman went on a shooting spree at the American Civic Centre on Friday, killing 13 people before turning the gun on himself.Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud told Reuters from an undisclosed location, "I accept responsibility. They are my men who attacked New York." The 'attack' was in response to US drone strikes in Pakistan.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan militants have found sanctuary in Afghanistan's eastern provinces, which are under the Haqqani network's control, reports B Raman
The case of Shahbaz Bhatti clearly shows that the terrorists were guided by someone from within the forces, as the killers not only knew that the minister had no security at the time they planned to attack him but they also succeeded in leaving the place undisturbed.
Taliban militants on Tuesday declared an indefinite ceasefire in Pakistan's restive Swat valley where they have been waging an armed campaign for the last two years. Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told reporters in Swat that a meeting of the 'Shura' or 'council' of the militants had decided to extend the ceasefire for an indefinite period. The local Taliban led by Fazlullah had last week called a ten-day unilateral truce to facilitate peace talks.
Banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan's operational commander and an unidentified foreigner have been arrested by intelligence operatives in the restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, according to a media report on Thursday.
The Pakistani Taliban have mocked Interior Minister Rehman Malik by describing him as a 'comedian', with a militant spokesman saying a 'serious person' should replace him for any dialogue between the two sides.
Hundreds of Taliban fighters on Friday carried out fresh attacks in a remote area in northwest Pakistan bordering Afghanistan though security forces claimed to have regained control of the region after fierce fighting that killed nearly 80 people, including 28 troops.
As Afghanistan gradually realises that there can be no long-term stability in the country as long as Pakistan is involved, the time has come for India to register its solidarity when it would be most appreciated, says former foreign secretary Shyam Saran.
The Pakistani Taliban has staged a bloody comeback in Malakand division by killing three peace committee chiefs, reports Tahir Ali.
Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence had brought in Haqqani network's chief Sirajuddin Haqqani as the deputy leader of the Taliban last year to protect him from the Americans, a media report said on Sunday.
With cracks emerging in the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, its operatives are now joining the Punjabi Taliban, which is a growing threat not only for Indian but also Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence
Afghan forces backed by air support from Nato aircraft have launched a broad sweep of the country's northeast borders killing 59 Taliban insurgents in a major offensive in a province that serves as a militant supply route from Pakistan.
Mulla Dadullah Akhund, Taliban military commander spoke to a Pakistani newspaper.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan on Tuesday refused to confirm the death of Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour but said a DNA test will be done to establish the identity of a man killed in a American drone strike last week.
Claiming that 'thousands of our well-armed militants are ready to fight alongside the army if any war is imposed on Pakistan', chief of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Baitullah Mehsud, told The News daily by phone from an undisclosed location. Hundreds of would-be bombers had been 'given suicide jackets and explosive-laden vehicles for protection of the border in case of any aggression by the Indian forces', he said.
Pakistan has informed the United States that it is ready to facilitate its peace talks with Taliban, but it must not be blamed in case of failure, as it does not spoon-feed the militant group, a media report said on Sunday.
Cut off from the world and having to contend with an orthodox and repressive Taliban government, Afghans are facing the brunt of Pakistan's decades old policy of nurturing militant groups, note Harsh V Pant and Kriti M Shah four months after the Taliban took Kabul.
A former leading Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence officer, who claimed to have been a mentor of Taliban, has been killed almost a year after he was kidnapped by militants in the Waziristan tribal region.
The arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the second-in-command of the Taliban forces operating in Afghanistan, is being seen as a dramatic shift in the policies of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency, which had hitherto covertly supported some of the organisation's top leaders.But experts warn that by helping the Central Intelligence Agency nab Baradar, the Pakistan government and the ISI will lose the sympathies of Mullah Omer-led Afghan Taliban.
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