ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s defence minister has warned that a fresh wave of Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia could be enough to activate a fledgling trilateral defence pact between Islamabad, Riyadh and Ankara, as the Yemeni conflict edges closer to spilling across the kingdom’s southern border.
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Pakistan rallies behind Saudi Arabia after Houthi strikes wound 73, hit energy facilities
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif moved swiftly on Tuesday to condemn a wave of Houthi missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia, reaffirming Pakistan’s solidarity with the kingdom within hours of an assault that wounded 73 people and ignited fires at oil facilities across four southern Saudi cities — a response that leaned heavily on a trilateral defence pact Islamabad, Riyadh and Ankara had only recently finalised.
CM Afridi completes contested run to Karachi, sharpens fight over jailed ex-premier
KARACHI — Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi rolled into this port city in the early hours of Monday after a drive of more than six hours through detours, blocked highways, and what his party described as deliberately dug-up pavement, capping a five-day mobilisation tour that has hardened the standoff between his party and Pakistan’s provincial authorities ahead of a nationwide protest planned for September 27.
Military reports major toll in three-day campaign against India-backed militants near Afghan border
Pakistan’s military said on Sunday that security forces killed at least 36 militants in a series of operations along the Afghan border over three days, as the government renewed its demand that the Taliban administration in Kabul curb cross-border attacks it blames on Afghan soil.
Naqvi reopens debate over provincial boundaries; says public, not politicians, must decide
LAHORE: Pakistan’s interior minister said on Saturday that any effort to create new provinces or administrative units in the country must be driven by public demand rather than political calculation, reviving a debate that has strained relations among the government’s coalition partners and drawn sharp opposition from officials in Sindh province.
In Pakistan, a fight over provinces map splits ruling coalition
ISLAMABAD: A long-dormant argument over how Pakistan should be governed has burst back into public view this week, pitting the country’s two largest ruling parties against each other and drawing in a president, a prime minister, and at least three federal ministers.
Iran, US trade fire as war enters deadlier phase; Pakistan clings to fading hope for peace
ISLAMABAD: A missile strike that Iranian officials say tore through a wedding celebration in a small coastal town, killing four people and wounding dozens more, thrust the six-month-old war between the United States and Iran into a bloodier and more volatile phase this week, as retaliatory fire from Tehran reached military installations in four separate countries.
After legal win in The Hague, Pakistan tells India at SCO not to weaponise water
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told leaders of a major Asian security bloc on Tuesday that water “must never be weaponised,” using a summit stage to press neighbouring India on a decades-old river-sharing treaty just a day after an international tribunal ruled that India could not unilaterally suspend it.
PM Sharif meets Iranian Pezeshkian in Kyrgyzstan as Tehran-Washington conflict reignites
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met on Monday with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of a regional summit in Bishkek, pressing the case for diplomatic restraint just hours after the United States and Iran exchanged their first direct strikes in more than a month, reigniting a war that has simmered since February.
Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia open first defence talks under new mutual-security pact
ISLAMABAD: Senior Pakistani officials arrived in Turkey for the first formal meeting of a strategic committee established under a new trilateral defence pact with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which commits each nation to treat an attack on any one of them as an attack on all three.