ISLAMABAD: Defence minister took to the floor of the National Assembly on Thursday to rebuke a banned Kashmiri protest movement, urging it to settle its grievances at the ballot box rather than through marches and confrontation — as that very movement’s supporters massed on the outskirts of a regional capital and a fragile standoff showed no sign of resolution.
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No survivors after army helicopter Mi-17 crashes near Muzaffarabad; inquiry ordered
ISLAMABAD: A Pakistan Army Mi-17 helicopter crashed near Muzaffarabad on Wednesday, killing all personnel on board when the aircraft went down during takeoff due to what military officials described as a technical fault, marking the third deadly helicopter accident involving security or government in less than one year.
Pakistan hosts back-to-back military diplomacy as Gulf and Lebanese commanders converge on Rawalpindi
RAWALPINDI: The commander of Bahrain’s National Guard held separate meetings with all three of Pakistan’s service chiefs on Tuesday, as Islamabad positioned itself at the centre of a busy round of military diplomacy with the Middle East against the backdrop of a fragile ceasefire in the US-Iran conflict.
Shops shut and streets empty in Azad Kashmir as banned group defies crackdown with long march to Muzaffarabad
RAWALAKOT: The streets of this mountain city in Azad Jammu and Kashmir were quiet on Monday under a second consecutive day of shuttered shops and absent traffic — an uneasy stillness that followed weekend clashes that left eleven people dead, including four law enforcement officers, and that a banned political committee was seeking to channel into a region-wide general strike and protest march.
Pakistan tells UK to stay out of Kashmir affairs as death toll rises in protest crackdown
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Ministry on Monday sharply rebuked members of the British-Pakistani diaspora and several British lawmakers over their comments on unrest in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, telling them to stay out of the country’s internal affairs as at least seven civilians lay dead following clashes between security forces and protesters in the territory.
PPP claims victory in Gilgit-Baltistan as rivals cry foul over missing vote tallies
GILGIT: The Pakistan Peoples Party appeared on Sunday night to have won a commanding plurality in elections for the Gilgit-Baltistan Legislative Assembly, with unofficial returns from across the remote Himalayan territory showing the party leading in at least 10 of the 24 directly contested seats — even as its own leaders joined rival parties in accusing election officials of withholding the paperwork that stands between a result and a verified one.
AJK Supreme Court rules refugee assembly seats can only be removed by elected parliament — not by protest
MUZAFFARABAD: The Supreme Court of Azad Jammu and Kashmir has delivered a pointed constitutional rebuke to a banned protest movement demanding the abolition of reserved seats for Kashmiri refugees, ruling that the twelve contested places in the region’s legislative assembly enjoy full constitutional protection and can be removed only through formal parliamentary amendment — not through street agitation or political pressure.
Gilgit-Baltistan votes again with electricity cuts, broken roads and empty promises still on the ballot
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s northernmost territory goes to the polls on Sunday for the first time in six years, after elections originally scheduled for February were postponed when winter snows rendered many of its mountain constituencies effectively unreachable. Nearly 960,000 voters are registered across Gilgit-Baltistan’s 24 general constituencies. The problems they want fixed are the same ones they brought to the ballot box in 2009, 2015 and 2020: electricity blackouts lasting up to 22 hours a day, broken roads in remote valleys, schools without teachers, and an unemployment crisis among a young population with few prospects. None of the major parties campaigning across the region in recent weeks has offered any serious plan to address them.
On eve of Gilgit-Baltistan vote, Imran Khan’s PTI cries rigging as police pour in from across Pakistan
SKARDU: At a busy road cutting through this northern district, cars pass draped in the banners of rival political parties. Election symbols flicker from storefronts and party flags snap in the mountain wind. Gilgit-Baltistan, a dramatic swath of glacier and granite that borders China, Afghanistan, and Indian-administered Kashmir, is preparing to go to the polls for the first time in six years.
Pakistan pushes SCO partners for unified front against terror, cybercrime
ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi arrived at a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s security ministers in Oslo on Friday carrying two distinct, and increasingly urgent, messages: that the region’s governments must forge a unified front against a new generation of technologically sophisticated threats — and that the diplomatic window for ending a dangerous escalation between the United States and Iran was narrowing fast.