Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud has claimed that controversial American security firm Blackwater was behind the deadly bomb attack on a market in Peshawar that killed 105 people on Wednesday. In an interview with BBC Urdu, he claimed that Blackwater and 'Pakistani agencies' were involved in attacks in public places, in an attempt to discredit the militants. Reports in the Pakistani media have claimed that Blackwater has established a presence in the country.
Sri Lanka has turned down an offer to tour Pakistan because of security concerns, the Sri Lankan cricket board said on Tuesday.
At least three gunmen, all reported to be members of the Taliban, stormed a central Kabul bank on Wednesday morning, and are currently surrounded by police.
A day after reports that Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a United States drone attack in North Waziristan, the militant group has said he is alive and the speculation about his death was a ruse to locate his whereabouts.
The Taliban on Monday threatened to kill Britain's Prince Harry, who is serving a fresh deployment in Afghanistan as an Apache attack helicopter pilot, four years after his previous battle stint in the war-torn country was cut short over similar threats.
American officials possess satellite photos that 'purportedly' show Pakistani army trucks picking up Taliban troops, Time said.
As his militants triggered a series of attacks and suicide blasts across Pakistan on Thursday, Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud threatened to dispatch terrorists to fight India, once an Islamic state had been created in Pakistan. "We want an Islamic state. If we get that, then we will go to the borders and help fight the Indians," Hakimullah said. "We are fighting the (Pakistan) military, police and militia because they are following American orders," he added.
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda is in its worst financial state in several years, while the Taliban's funding is flourishing as they rely on a range of criminal activities to fund attacks on US-led forces in Afghanistan, a senior US Treasury Department official has said.
The four militants -- Maulvi Abdus Salam, Hazrat Ali, Mujeebur Rehman and Sabeel alias Yahya -- were executed in a civil jail in Kohat near Peshawar.
Although the United States have denied confirmation, but it's apparent that Tehrik-e-Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud has been killed in a recent US drone attack in South Waziristan, Pakistan. Mehsud's death signifies tremendous implications, and was possibly a result of intelligence penetration. Explains security expert B Raman
Four motorcycle-borne Taliban militants on Monday shot dead a diplomat of Saudi Arabia -- a staunch United States ally -- in Karachi, apparently to avenge Osama bin Laden's killing by American forces in Pakistan.
According to US intelligence sources, Kaashmiri was killed in a missile attack carried out by unmanned aircraft in South Waziristan on September 7.
A top Taliban commander was among the five people killed on Friday in a powerful blast in a market in Pakistan's restive South Waziristan tribal region.
New Tehrik-e-Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud surfaced on Monday and vowed to strike United States and Pakistani interests -- to avenge the killing of his slain leader Baitullah Mehsud and American drone attacks on the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. His appearance in front of a select group of reporters in the South Waziristan tribal area ended speculation over his reported death in a contest for leadership of the Pakistan Taliban, sparked by Baitullah's killing.
A shocked Pakistan on Wednesday began observing 3 days of national mourning for the 141 people, mostly children, massacred by the Taliban suicide attackers in horrendous terror attack in northwestern city of Peshawar.
Rediff.com gives its readers a glimpse of what it's like being a woman in Pakistan
No one claimed responsibility for the killing of Zainuddin, who had expressed his opposition to Baitullah Mehsud in recent media interviews. Zainuddin had also declared war against the Pakistani Taliban chief and his followers.
US officials said the message did not amount to an ultimatum but rather it was intended to "prod a reluctant Pakistani military" to go after Taliban insurgents in Pakistan who are directing attacks in Afghanistan.
Security was tightened around a government girls' school in Rawalpindi after a letter allegedly sent by the Pakistani Taliban warned that it would be blown up if it is not shut down, a media report said on Monday.
The terrorist attack was carried out by ISIS gunmen, General Kenneth Franklin McKenzie, Commander of the United States Central Command, told reporters at a Pentagon news conference on Thursday, hours after the terrorists opened gunfire at American soldiers standing outside the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
At least 200 religious scholars in Pakistan have issued a fatwa terming suicide attacks as "un-Islamic" and said the Islamic governments are bound to crush rebel groups like the Taliban, ISIS and Al-Qaeda.
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.
India strongly condemned the terror attack, saying targeting of a religious place in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak reflects the "diabolical mindset" of the perpetrators and their backers.
"We will wait till January for our offensive since we are stronger during the snowing season," said Hakimullah, who was made chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan after his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a US drone attack in August
Three militant factions, including splinter groups of the Taliban, have separately claimed responsibility for the suicide attack that took place after the popular flag-lowering ceremony at Wagah in Pakistan.
Afghanistan intelligence officials believe that terror outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba planned and carried out the terror attack in Kabul last week that killed 16 people, including six Indians.The Afghan Taliban have already claimed responsibility for the attack, during which a car bomb was triggered off and terrorists wearing suicide vests raided hotels frequented by Indians and foreigners, targeting the visitors.
Both Indians were employed as security guards with American company DynCorp, official sources told PTI.
A 14-year-old boy arrested with five terror suspects, who were allegedly plotting an attack on a five-star hotel to kill Americans, has said that a Pakistani Taliban activist had lured him to the eastern city of Lahore with the promise of a job.
Amidst Taliban threats, over 230 educational institutions, most of them government-run, in Pakistan's Punjab province have been shut, with authorities asking them to step up security by Sunday or face action.
An Afghan police officer, who had earlier survived a series of Taliban attacks, was among five people killed in different roadside bombings in the southern militant stronghold of Uruzgan.
The Pakistan consulate in the eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad was sealed off on Wednesday after a suicide bomber detonated himself followed by gunfire. Seven people have been reported killed.
The Tehrike-e-Taliban of Pakistan has taken responsibility of the attack on Bannu police station killing in which at least 20 security personnel were killed on Monday.
At least eight soldiers and 25 militants were killed on Tuesday in a skirmish that began after scores of Taliban fighters attacked a military post in the restive Kurram tribal region of northwest Pakistan, which has witnessed fierce clashes in recent days.
After militants launched attacks on army posts and tried to blow up an army convoy, the military pressed helicopter gun ships to bombard their hideouts in the area, for the first time in recent months.
Police and paramilitary troops set up security posts and bunkers protected by sandbags in Kabal, a small town near Maulana Fazlullah's stronghold at Imamdheri.
Two suicide attacks killed at least 35 people and wounded hundreds more in Kabul on Friday, the first major attacks in the Afghan capital since the announcement of Taliban leader Mullah Omar's death.
The Pakistani Taliban has said it will target journalists and media organisations for "fabricating" the statement of its spokesperson asking news outlets not to pay tribute to cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar on his retirement.
Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik has announced a one million dollar bounty on Mullah Fazlullah, the leader of Tehrik-e-Taliban who is behind the attack on teenage rights activist Malala Yousufzai. "This conspiracy assassination plan was made across the border in Afghanistan. Of course, (by) Mullah Fazlullah, who had fled when we took action in Malakand Swat," Malik saod.
Former Central Intelligence Agency South Asia analyst, Lisa Curtis, now a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, recalled how in 1995, when she served in Islamabad as a diplomat, the Pakistan-based terror groups that were funded, armed and supported by the Inter-Services Intelligence specifically to launch attacks in Kashmir against Indian security forces, also had strong links to the Taliban.
The participants exchanged views on ways and means to bring peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.
