MUZAFFARABAD: Two people were killed and eight others wounded in clashes between protesters and law enforcement in the Azad Kashmir city of Rawalakot in the early hours of Sunday, as a deepening political crisis over forthcoming regional elections exposed significant fractures within Pakistan’s ruling coalition.
top-politics
PM Sharif extends olive branch to opposition even as parliament clashes over budget cuts
ISLAMABAD: The day after his government laid out an $67.5 billion federal budget built on austerity and IMF discipline, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif stood before a restless National Assembly on Saturday and offered something harder to price: an appeal to the political opposition to set aside their differences and forge a shared compact for the country’s future.
Death toll reaches 20 as protesters scatter before dawn in Azad Kashmir – report
RAWALAKOT: They came by the thousands, converging on the eastern edges of this mountain city from across the rugged districts of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. By midnight Thursday, they were gone.
Pakistan again warns India that blocking water flow would amount to an ‘act of war’
ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office again warned on Thursday that any deliberate effort by India to block the flow of water across their shared border would constitute an act of war under the United Nations Charter, issuing another public rebuke as New Delhi increased its aggressive posture over one of South Asia’s most volatile fault lines.
Pakistan strikes militant hideouts along Afghan border, killing 26, as tensions spiral
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan carried out airstrikes on militant hideouts along its volatile northwestern border with Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing 26 fighters, the government said, in retaliation for a string of deadly attacks that have claimed the lives of soldiers and police officers across the country’s restive frontier provinces in recent weeks.
Banned Kashmir group’s strike shutters markets; PM urges talks as sedition cases filed
MUZAFFARABAD: Streets fell quiet and markets shuttered across Azad Kashmir on Tuesday as a recently banned civil rights alliance pressed ahead with a strike, while the regional government ordered sedition proceedings against two of its leaders and the prime minister appealed for a return to negotiations.
PPP wins most seats in Gilgit-Baltistan vote but needs allies to govern
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s ruling coalition partner, the Pakistan Peoples Party, won the most seats in an election in the northern territory of Gilgit-Baltistan on Monday but fell short of a majority, leaving independent candidates with the power to determine who governs a region that sits at the heart of Beijing’s signature infrastructure push into South Asia.
Death toll rises to eleven as Azad Kashmir clashes grow into broader crisis
RAWLAKOT: At least seven civilians and four police officers were killed on Sunday in the deadliest violence to grip Azad Jammu and Kashmir in years, as clashes between security forces and supporters of the newly banned Joint Awami Action Committee tore through Rawlakot, leaving a territory already on edge now staring down a deepening political and security crisis.
Four policemen dead, dozens wounded as Kashmir protest movement spirals into bloodshed
RAWLAKOT: Four police officers were killed and more than 20 others wounded on Sunday in some of the worst violence to strike Azad Jammu and Kashmir in years, as clashes between security forces and supporters of a newly banned protest movement turned a regional political standoff into open bloodshed.
Gilgit-Baltistan goes to the polls for first time in six years as PPP cries foul over missing vote count forms
GILGIT: Polling for Gilgit-Baltistan’s legislative assembly concluded on Sunday after a day of largely uninterrupted voting across one of Pakistan’s most strategically significant and geographically forbidding territories — though the relative calm of the contest itself was punctured almost immediately as the Pakistan Peoples Party began alleging systematic attempts to withhold vote count documentation and manipulate the result.