Clashes between Pakistani security forces and Taliban militants have left 36 people, a majority of them rebels, dead in Bajaur tribal region over the past three days, military sources said.
'When he said, "Extremists have gone very extreme," it suddenly occurred to me why his speech pattern seemed so familiar. He was that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle. And uncle thinks he is about to say something very profound -- if you would only pour him one last one.'
Defying Taliban death threats and violence that claimed 24 lives, millions of Pakistanis on Saturday voted in a landmark general election that marked the first democratic transition in the country's 66-year history.
A Pakistani military helicopter carrying 11 foreigners crashed in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir on Friday, killing ambassadors of the Philippines and Norway and at least five others as the Taliban claimed responsibility for the downing of the chopper and said Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was the target.
Pakistan's army chief General Raheel Sharif will visit Afghanistan tomorrow to meet the new leaders there and discuss security issues, including the thorny one of Pakistani Taliban militants hiding there.
The Taliban on Wednesday abducted and released 30 Pakistani security personnel in Swat Valley after the hostages promised to quit their jobs in exchange for freedom.
Pakistani security forces backed by helicopter gunships pounded militant hideouts in the restive North Waziristan region Friday, killing 18 pro-Taliban militants after rebels attacked a pramilitary post leaving a soldier dead.
Born in the Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh on October 5, 1951, Mohammed Mazhar, lives at ST 1/A, Block 2, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, and carries three Pakistani passports (KZ 550207, KC550207 and G15429), the Treasury said.
At least 45 Taliban fighters and four security personnel were killed when Pakistani troops repelled an overnight attack by militants on a paramilitary camp in the troubled South Waziristan tribal region, officials said on Sunday.
Pakistani law enforcement agencies on Sunday claimed to have made a breakthrough in their probe into the recent three near-simultaneous terror attacks on security facilities in Lahore by arresting a Punjabi Taliban militant, from whom banned literature and 'jihadi' compact discs were also seized.
Sixteen militants were killed in two United States drone strikes within last 24 hours in Pakistan's restive tribal region, ending a five-month hiatus.
The police also said that an initial probe has suggested that the banned terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is behind the suicide attack that injured over 100 people in Khar, the capital of Bajaur tribal district.
There have been conflicting reports about whether Taliban's supreme council was consulted or not on the election
A hitherto unknown pro-Taliban group called 'Ansar Wa Mohajir' has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's car bomb attack in Lahore, for which four alleged Indian nationals have reportedly been arrested by Pakistani authorities.
At least 25 security personnel were killed in a fierce gunbattle that erupted after hundreds of Taliban fighters from Afghanistan crossed into northwest Pakistan and attacked a remote security check post on Wednesday.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari today said his government was determined to eliminate Taliban militants from the region but promised to make every effort to keep collateral damage to the minimum.
The Indian American Intellectuals Forum and Nambdhari Sikh Foundation of New York have sharply criticised the Pakistan government for not taking action against Taliban who demanded US $ 50 million from Sikhs in border areas of the country as Jazia (religious tax) and ransacked, looted and blew up their houses when they refused to pay.
If rapid Talibanisation of Pakistan continues, the next generation of the world's most sophisticated terrorists will be born, indoctrinated, and trained in the nuclear-armed Pakistan, an American think tank on Tuesday said in a report.
Poe alleged that Taliban is still based in Pakistan and it came as no surprise when a US drone strike killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansoor.
'Will Imran compromise with the army? We are all human beings. We all compromise.'
The meeting was facilitated by Pakistan's spy agency -- the ISI
"There seems to be a growing recognition that the Taliban and other miscreants, to use the Pakistanis own word for this, are a threat to the entire country and are alien to the spirit of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the founders of Pakistan," Holbrooke said at a press conference after the meeting of Friends of Democratic Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York on Thursday.
The New York Times reported that Pakistan was moving 6,000 troops (more than a brigade) to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan, quoting a Pakistani official who did not want to be identified. The Pakistan military, advancing on three fronts backed by fighter aircraft and attack helicopters in Buner, snatched the vital 8-km-long Ambela heights which overlook most of Buner.
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.
Three Taliban militants have been given a death sentence by a Pakistani court for attacking trucks carrying critical supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan in 2010.
The head of the Pakistani police team probing former premier Benazir Bhutto's assassination on Sunday accused Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud of planning and financing her killing.
A top commander of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Omar Khalid Khorasani and three other top terrorists have been killed in a mysterious blast in eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, a Pakistani media report said on Monday.
After intense pressure from the United States, Pakistan has reportedly agreed to launch a full-scale offensive against the Taliban and other extremist organisations in their stronghold North Waziristan, but has also clarified to the Obama administration that the timing of the military offensive would be decided by it.
"You can never win the war in Afghanistan," said 'Colonel Imam', who ran a training programme for the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union's occupation from 1979 to 1989, and then helped to form the Taliban. "I have worked with these people since the 1970s and I tell you they will never be defeated. Anyone who has come here has got stuck. The more you kill, the more they will expand," Imam told The Sunday Times.
Praising commando of Pakistan's Elite force Mumtaz Qadri for assassinating Punjab Governor Salaam Taseer, the Taliban warned that all those who opposed the blasphemy law would meet a similar fate.
A majority of Pakistanis still consider India as a major threat, view America as an enemy and are far less concerned about the Taliban and the Al Qaeda
Taliban leader Mullah Mansour was killed in a United States airstrike.
A fierce gun battle between security personnel and militants holed up in a house on the outskirts of Peshawar on Sunday claimed four lives, including that of a policeman, hours after nine people were killed during an abortive attempt by the Taliban to storm an air force base in the northwestern Pakistani city.
Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan has urged the United States to strike a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan on the pattern of the Swat pact, saying that the real threat was from the Al Qaeda. "The only way forward is dialogue, which is what (Afghan President) Hamid Karzai is finally saying. You have to start talking to the Taliban," Khan said. He warned that US President Barack Obama's Afghan policy is 'exactly the same way as the mess' made by Bush.
A Pakistani court barred the government from extraditing five Afghan Taliban leaders captured in the country, including Mullah Baradar, and asked the administration to explain its position in the matter on Friday.
While the United States has already shown dissatisfaction over Pakistan's claims that Dr Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani physician who helped the Central Intelligence Agency track down and kill Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, had relation with militants, the Pakistan Taliban have not only rejected the reports of any links with him, but has also said that the imprisoned doctor is 'wajib-ul-qatal' (one that deserve death penalty), as he helped the US to kill bin Laden
Officials said unidentified men attacked a security check-post on Friday night near Miranshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan, injuring security personnel.
The revelation was made by ISI officials during a three-hour briefing behind closed doors for the Senate Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production on Thursday.
TTP released a video of its militants holding a Shoulder Launch Missile, which the militant group claimed to have used in downing a Pakistan military helicopter.
The murder of two Sikhs by the Taliban in the restless tribal belt highlights the plight of the minorities there. Rajeev Sharma reports.
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