KARACHI/ISLAMABAD: Millions of Shia Muslims marked Ashura across Pakistan on Friday under one of the country’s most extensive security operations in recent memory, with authorities deploying more than 200,000 military, paramilitary and police personnel as processions in major cities concluded without incident.
People
FIA busts human placenta smuggling network bound for Vietnam, arrests three Chinese nationals
ISLAMABAD: The Federal Investigation Agency said on Friday it had dismantled an alleged network smuggling processed human placenta out of the country, arresting five suspects, including three Chinese nationals, following raids on two properties in the capital.
Pakistan returns 22 crew of US-seized Iranian tanker, completing repatriation of over 70 seafarers
ISLAMABAD/KARACHI: Twenty-two Iranian crew members whose oil tanker was seized by United States naval forces during the brief but disruptive conflict earlier this year arrived in Karachi on Friday, Pakistani and Iranian officials said, marking the fourth such repatriation mission facilitated by Islamabad since hostilities ended.
Pakistan marks Ashura with massive processions and heavy security presence nationwide
ISLAMABAD: Millions of Pakistanis took to the streets on Friday for Ashura, the most solemn day of the Islamic month of Muharram, as authorities deployed tens of thousands of security personnel across the country — a day after four people died from suffocation during a procession in the southern province of Sindh.
Minor girl, 3, found raped and killed in sack outside family home; relatives among suspects
KARACHI: Police have taken DNA samples from 12 suspects, including relatives of the victim, as they investigate the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl whose body was found stuffed in a sack outside her home in Karachi, officials said on Thursday.
PTI rejects PM Sharif’s election legitimacy defence, calls for judicial scrutiny of 2024 vote
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s main opposition party on Wednesday sharply rejected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s defence of his government’s electoral legitimacy, accusing him of implicitly conceding that the February 2024 general elections were fraudulent, and called for a judicially supervised audit of the vote.
French climber dies in K-6 avalanche; two teammates survive
ISLAMABAD: A French climber died after an avalanche struck a three-member international team attempting to scale K-6, a 7,282-metre peak in Pakistan’s remote northern Karakoram range, a tour operator said on Wednesday, the latest fatality to hit the country’s high-altitude climbing season.
Armed men abduct eight police, including bomb squad officers, in South Waziristan
PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen ambushed and abducted eight police officers in Pakistan’s Upper South Waziristan district on Wednesday, seizing them as they returned from a bomb disposal mission in one of the country’s most volatile tribal regions, officials said.
Coalition partners demand apology, defence minister’s resignation over Kashmir identity slur
ISLAMABAD: The governing coalition showed rare public signs of strain on Wednesday as the chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party demanded to know why a senior federal minister remained in his post after asserting that residents of the protest-hit Azad Jammu and Kashmir town of Rawalakot were not Kashmiris — remarks that also drew condemnation from a major religious party and a formal apology from a former prime minister on the minister’s behalf.
Six TTP militants killed in Lower Dir as security forces step up counterterror push
PESHAWAR: Security forces killed six suspected militants in a hillside firefight in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday, officials said, after intelligence tracked the same group believed responsible for a recent attack on a police checkpost that left a constable dead.