MUZAFFARABAD: Police in Azad Jammu and Kashmir arrested at least 72 members of a freshly banned protest movement in a sweep conducted over roughly 18 hours, authorities said on Saturday, alleging that some detainees were found carrying weapons, communication devices and documents suggesting coordination with foreign individuals.
top-politics
Six militants killed in Panjgur raid as Pakistan steps up campaign against India-linked terror group
ISLAMABAD: The security forces killed six militants in an overnight intelligence-led operation in the southwestern district of Panjgur, the military said Friday, the latest strike in an accelerating counterterrorism campaign that Islamabad has increasingly cast as a proxy war with neighboring India.
No more appeals: Top court upholds death sentence for killer Zahir Jaffer who murdered and beheaded Noor Mukadam
The Supreme Court rejected the last legal appeal filed by Zahir Jaffer, the Pakistani-American heir to an industrial fortune who was convicted of the July 2021 killing of Noor Mukadam, 27, and has now exhausted nearly every avenue of appeal available to him under Pakistani law. The three-member bench, led by Justice Muhammad Hashim Khan Kakar, announced the decision after nearly four hours of oral argument, cementing a death sentence that has survived review at every level of the country’s judiciary.
Pessimism Returns: Economic confidence in Pakistan plummets to pandemic-era lows
KARACHI: Just months after a surprising surge of optimism swept Pakistani public opinion, that confidence has largely dissolved.
Security forces kill 17 militants in Balochistan raids following deadly train attack
ISLAMABAD: The military said on Tuesday it has killed 17 militants in a series of intelligence-based operations sweeping across Balochistan, the country’s restive southwestern province, in retaliation for a suicide bombing last month that struck a passenger train near Quetta and left at least 14 people dead.
EU’s top diplomat praises Pakistan’s back-channel role in averting wider US-Iran war
ISLAMABAD: The European Union’s top diplomat arrived in Pakistan’s capital Monday and offered Islamabad a striking public endorsement: that its behind-the-scenes diplomacy between Washington and Tehran had, on more than one occasion, helped pull the world back from the edge.
Opposition PTI cries foul as authorities flood Gilgit-Baltistan with 6,000 Punjab police ahead of vote
ISLAMABAD: In the days before a closely watched regional election in Pakistan’s mountainous north, the government has dispatched 6,000 police officers from Punjab province to Gilgit-Baltistan — a deployment the opposition says is less about security than about silencing dissent.
EU foreign policy chief Kallas to visit Pakistan on Monday for high-level bilateral talks
ISLAMABAD: European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas travels to Islamabad on Monday for a high-level bilateral visit that will see her co-chair the eighth round of the EU-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue alongside Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar.
Pakistan rules out Israel ties without Palestinian state, defying Trump’s Abraham Accords push
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will not normalise relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is established, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on Friday, rebuffing pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to expand the Abraham Accords as part of a broader Middle East peace settlement.
Rubio praises Pakistan’s mediation as US-Iran ceasefire talks reach critical juncture
ISLAMABAD: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Friday with Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar at the State Department, praising Islamabad’s diplomatic efforts to help broker an end to the conflict with Iran as negotiations over a potential ceasefire extension appeared to hang in the balance.