Islamabad, July 28: Two-hundred boys, who were being trained at a secret location to carry out suicide attacks, were rescued by the security forces in northwest Pakistan, a media report said Monday.
The boys, aged from six to 13 years, were rescued in Mardan in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Geo TV said.
Meanwhile, the children were shifted to a rehabilitation centre where they will receive psychiatric treatment.
Islamabad, July 27: At least 31 militants were killed and 28 others, including a Taliban commander, were arrested in separate operations in northwestern Pakistan, according to a media report Monday.
According to the Pakistan Army’s Inter Service Public Relations (ISPR), 11 militants were killed and 28 others, including the wanted commander identified as Kabir, were arrested during a search operation in Swat Valley in North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Geo TV reported.
Islamabad, July 27: Pakistani security forces have detained a former pro-Taliban lawmaker in connection with the slaying of a Polish engineer by militants earlier this year.
Shah Abdul Aziz, who has close links with militant groups, was taken into custody on Saturday.
“He (Aziz) is suspected of ordering the beheading of Polish engineer Piotr Stanczak,” DPA quoted police officer Mahmood Khan as saying.
The arrest comes days after Attaullah Khan, one of Stanczak’s alleged killers, confessed that the Taliban had killed the engineer on the orders of Aziz.
Islamabad, July 27: Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik has constituted a committee to investigate the cases against pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Sufi Muhammad who was arrested Sunday in northwestern Peshawar City, the Online news agency reported.
Sufi Muhammad is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, head of the Taliban in Swat Valley, and headed the banned Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariah Muhammadi (TNSM).
The security forces also detained the cleric’s two sons, Ziaullah and Rizwanullah, in a raid in Peshawar City.
Islamabad, July 27: Influential Maulana Sufi Mohammed, the founder and leader of Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shari’ah Mohammadi (TNSM), has been detained by Pakistani authorities.
“The government has arrested Sufi Mohammad,” Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftekhar Hussein told a press conference. “We will investigate his role in Swat and Malakand and then we will register a case against him.”
Islamabad, July 26: Pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Muhammad, who brokered a now-defunct peace deal between the authorities and insurgents, was on Sunday arrested in northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar for his links to militants and his role in fomenting unrest in the lawless Swat valley.
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Islamabad, July 26: Hafiz Mohd Saeed, the chief of the banned Jamaat-ud-Dawa accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, has claimed that the linking of Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist arrested for the 26/11 strikes, to his group was part of a “conspiracy” against it.
Released from house arrest only last month after being detained in December, 2008 in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, Saeed made the remarks while addressing a Friday prayer congregation at a mosque in Gujranwala in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Friday.
Islamabad, July 26: Away from the killing fields between army and Taliban, violent riots triggered by chronic power cuts engulf Pakistan, underscoring government weakness and playing into the hands of extremists.
Burning tyres and throwing stones, mobs rampage daily in financial capital Karachi, where the first monsoons dumped 8.6 centimetres (3.4 inches) of rain, killed 30 people and brought power transmission to a virtual collapse.
Islamabad, July 26: The militants wore masks, carried weapons and came by the dozens. Still, they exhibited a strange sense of courtesy: They let the reporter’s relatives leave the house before they bombed it.
Rehman Buneri, who works for Khyber TV in Karachi and contributes to Voice of America’s Deewa Radio, was not home when the 50 or so gunmen showed up. Buneri told The Associated Press the gunmen said they’d been instructed by a “high command” to destroy the house because he had spoken negatively of the Taliban in a radio report.
Islamabad, July 25: Police in Pakistan has formally arrested a former lawmaker in the kidnapping and killing case of a polish engineer, it was revealed here on Saturday.
Former Member of National Assembly (MNA), Shah Abdul Aziz, has been formally arrested after the main Taliban suspect, currently in police custody, accused him as masterminding the kidnapping of Polish engineer, Piotr Stancza.
Islamabad, July 25: Pakistan security forces killed 14 militants and captured 29 more in fresh operations today in the restive Swat valley as continued heavy resistance from the Taliban seems to have bogged down the army in the area. The prolonged timeframe that troops are taking to flush out militants apparently is hitting the army”s plans for a massive offensive on the Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud and Al-qaeda cadres.
The Pakistani forces began their operations in Swat, Buner and Dir in April and its spokesman Maj. Gen.
Islamabad, July 25: As many as 14 terrorists were killed and 29 others were rounded up by the security forces in parts of Swat and Malakand, an ISPR update issued on search and clearance operation on Saturday said.
The security forces have also destroyed various hideouts of terrorists including training camp and a cave besides recovering huge cache of arms.
Islamabad, July 25: A Pakistani anti-terror court on Saturday adjourned till August 29 the trial of five LeT operatives, including its operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
Judge Baqir Ali Rana of anti-terror court no 2, who is conducting the trial in the high-security Adiala Jail in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, put off the matter after hearing arguments by the prosecution and defence, sources said to PTI.
Islamabad, July 24: Chairman Senate Farooq H. Naek Friday informed the House that Senator Dr Javed Leghari has tendered resignation from his Senate seat.
He said it is to inform the members that Senator Leghari has resigned from the House with effect from July 21.
Dr Leghari was elected on Pakistan Peoples Party’s ticket from Sindh in March 200 6 for a six-year term that was to expire on March 2012.
–Agencies
Islamabad, July 24: Branding Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud as “one of the most dangerous and odious people in the region,” US special envoy Richard Holbrooke has said that his elimination was “without a doubt” of strategic importance to Washington.
Holbrooke asked Pakistani security forces to go after Mehsud and his key aide Maulana Fazlullah because they pose a serious threat to this country.
Islamabad, July 24: Terming Kargil as a “big success”, former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has said India agreed to discuss Kashmir only because of that war in 1999.
“Yes, indeed, it was a big success because it had (an) impact even on the attitudes of the Indian side. How did we start discussing the Kashmir dispute? How was it that the Indians agreed that we will discuss Kashmir and there must be a negotiated settlement? Before this there was no such thing at all,” Musharraf said in an interview given to an Indian television channel.
Lahore, July 24: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party is planning to file a criminal case against former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, the Online news agency said.
Sardar Zulifqar Khosa, advisor to Punjab chief minister, said Thursday his party is consulting with senior lawyers to file a criminal or a civil case against former president Musharraf in the Supreme Court.
Khosa said the judiciary has become independent in the country and the notice to Musharraf Wednesday, summoning him July 29 in the Supreme Court, was a clear example in this regard.
Karachi, July 24: Heavy rains accompanied by thunderstorms battered the eastern Pakistani port city of Karachi Friday morning, a media report said.
Last weekend, more than a dozen people were killed and over a hundred others injured in various incidents caused by heavy rains and thunderstorms in the city.
The power lines were broken at several places in the city, Geo TV reported.
According to the Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC), at least 90 feeders stopped working due the to the broken cables.
Lahore, July 23: Most of the women prisoners were subjected to physical abuse during interrogations by police, says a survey conducted by AGHS Legal Aid Cell Team while visiting different jails.
According to survey, female prisoners constitute 1.4 percent of the total prisoners held in Punjab jails with 876 adults and 5 juveniles. Regretfully, 67 percent of them are under-trial.
Islamabad, July 23: Pakistan Army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency have launched concerted efforts to be involved in talks with India.
The diplomatic and other sources say the two organisations believe they can play a role because they are intrinsically linked to policy-making in Pakistan.
The ISI chief Lt Gen Shuja Pasha, a trusted aide of powerful army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has been involved in the move and reportedly brought up the matter during a meeting with the three defence advisers in the Indian High Commission earlier this month, the sources told.
Islamabad, July 23: Former president Pervez Musharraf has begun contacting legal experts after the Supreme Court summoned him to defend his Nov 3, 2007 decision to impose an emergency and sack judges of the apex court and other courts.
Musharraf consulted legal expert Sharifuddin Pirzada, former attorney general Malik Qayyum and former law minister Khalid Ranjha and discussed various aspects of the petition being heard by the Supreme Court, Daily Times reported Thursday.
Islamabad, July 23: The commander of the Taliban in Pakistan’s northwestern Swat valley is alive and has not been wounded, contrary to reports by the military, his spokesman said on Thursday.
The military said early this month that it believed it had wounded the commander, named Fazlullah, who has been on the run since the military launched an offensive in the region in late April.
“He’s alive. He was not wounded. All of the Taliban leadership is OK,” the spokesman, Muslim Khan, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Islamabad, July 23: US special envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke called on Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to discuss rehabilitation of the displaced persons of Malakand division and drone attacks.
Prime Minister Gilani in the meeting told the US envoy that the drone attacks in Pakistani territory threatening the war against terrorism and the government’s efforts to separate peaceful tribesmen from the militants.
The prime minister also urged the US to provide more funds for rehabilitation of the displaced persons and reconstruction in the terror-hit region.
Islamabad, July 23: RAW Terror Acts’ Proof Given To India, Pakistan says it has handed over to India evidence of the involvement of its external spy agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in terrorist activities in this country, including the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore and on a police academy on the outskirts of the city earlier this year.
Islamabad, July 23: A leading English daily in Pakistan today claimed that Pakistan had handed over a dossier allegedly containing “comprehensive evidence” of Indian involvement in several terrorist acts on its soil — including the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team — to India.
The dossier, with proof of “India’s involvement in subversive activities in Pakistan”, was handed over by Pakistan prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh during their recent meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the Dawn newspaper claimed, quoting sources.