MUZAFFARABAD: Senior leaders from Pakistan’s two governing coalition partners sat down again on Saturday in an attempt to calm a rapidly escalating row over allegations of vote-rigging in the first phase of elections in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, hours before polling opens in the region’s second phase on Sunday.

GILGIT: Record-setting Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja has died after an avalanche struck an expedition on Pakistan’s Broad Peak, his expedition company confirmed on Saturday, in a disaster that also killed one of Oman’s most accomplished climbers.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s energy regulator ordered the steepest increase in imported natural gas prices since the country began buying the fuel a decade ago, a move that will raise costs for millions of consumers already contending with elevated inflation, while the government redirects billions of rupees in unrelated savings toward debt reduction rather than price relief.

ISLAMABAD: An army officer was martyred on Saturday when security forces battled militants in North Waziristan, one of two intelligence-led operations in Pakistan’s restive western provinces that also left seven militants dead in Balochistan, including a would-be suicide bomber, according to the military’s media wing.