Pakistani Army Killed Militants

Eleven militants killed as Pakistani warplanes attack Taliban’s northwestern hideouts

A policeman walks near the front gates of the Mehran naval aviation base after troops ended operations against militants in Karachi. (File Photo)

Pakistani warplanes attacked Taliban positions in the northwestern Orakzai region on Tuesday, killing 11 militants, a senior regional government official said.

Orakzai is one of the tribal regions along the Afghan border where the Pakistani army has tried to root out militants with offensives against their strongholds.

The strike came a day after a local newspaper reported that Pakistan will launch an offensive in North Waziristan, a known sanctuary for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants also located in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

“We had information that militants gathered there and were planning attacks so we launched the attack,” senior government official Zaman Khan told Reuters in Kalaya, the main town of Orakzai. He said six militants were also wounded in the strike.

Pakistan’s performance in fighting militancy has come under scrutiny again after it was discovered that Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden had been living in the country.

Army operations have failed to break the back of militant groups such as the Pakistani Taliban, who have stepped up suicide bombings since US special forces killed Bin Laden near Islamabad on May 2.

After the Bin Laden raid, the United States has told Pakistan it needs to step up the fight against militants.

More than 4,300 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan in the last four years since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007.

Many of the attacks in Pakistan have targeted security forces, including young cadets or recruits.

Pakistan’s civilian government had said it would review counter-terrorism cooperation with the United States as it comes under growing domestic pressure to penalize Washington for the Bin Laden raid.

Washington did not inform Islamabad that an elite team of Navy SEALs had stealthily come by helicopter to the garrison town of Abbottabad from secret locations in Afghanistan until the commandos had cleared Pakistani airspace after a 40-minute operation, carrying with them Bin Laden’s corpse.

The covert nighttime raid has plunged Pakistani politics into turmoil with both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani facing calls to resign amid growing anti-American sentiment.

Pakistanis have been outraged at the perceived impunity of the US raid, while asking whether their military was too incompetent to know Bin Laden was living close to a major forces academy, or, worse, conspired to protect him.

Washington is pressing Islamabad to investigate how Bin Laden and several wives and children managed to live for five years under the noses of its military in a town just 35 miles north of the capital. Abbottabad houses Pakistan’s national military academy, and is a hill station where many retired military and intelligence personnel live.

One of Bin Laden’s wives told investigators he lived in Pakistan for more than seven years, security officials said. His earlier abode was in a hamlet.(Source: AlArabia)

Virginity Checks.

Egyptian general admits 'virginity checks' conducted on protesters

Egyptian protesters get virginity tests?

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• 17 women were arrested at a March 9 protest in Cairo, after Mubarak's ouster
• A senior Egyptian general says some of them were subject to "virginity checks"
• He says it was done so that they wouldn't claim later they had been raped
• One woman allegedly targeted had said, "They wanted to teach us a lesson"

Cairo (CNN) -- A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.
The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.

Journalist Dead.

Journalist Saleem Shahzad found dead near Islamabad

 

Days before his disappearance, Shahzad had authored an article that alleged links between navy officials and al Qaeda. — File photo

 

 

(Source:TheNews)

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani journalist has been found dead near the capital Islamabad after writing about links between the Pakistani military and al Qaeda, officials said Tuesday.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, 40, worked for an Italian news agency and an online news site registered in Hong Kong. He went missing on Sunday after he left his home in the capital to take part in a television talk show, but never arrived.

Aid agencies put on alert ahead of N.Waziristan operation

Navy Commando Arrested.

Kaira for expanding tax network to achieve progress

Two dead in Iran air force helicopter crash: IRNA

Former Navy commando arrested in 

PNS Mehran investigation

AgenciesYesterday

The brothers were arrested from the Gulberg area in Lahore for suspected links to the PNS Mehran base attacks that took place in Karachi earlier last week. – Reuters Photo

LAHORE: Pakistani security
officials have
detained a former navy commando
and his brother in connection with last week’s
militant attack on a naval air base,
intelligence officials and relatives said on Monday.
The brazen assault on the PNS Mehran base in Karachi, the headquarters of Pakistan’s
naval air wing,embarrassed the military and raised doubts about its ability to protect its
bases after a similar raidon the army headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi in 2009.
Kamran Ahmed, who was sacked from the navy about 10 years ago, and his younger
brother Zaman,were picked up from the eastern city of Lahore on Friday, five days after
the attack that killed at least10 military personnel.
“They have been detained in connection with the naval base attack and are under
interrogation,”one intelligence official said, without giving details.
Imran Ahmed, another brother who was not arrested, told Reuters the two were
taken away by intelligence officials on Friday. He gave no details.
An earlier arrest of a suspect in the Mehran base attack led to the arrest of the
Ahmed brothers.A second intelligence official said Kamran Ahmed served at Mehran and was
court-martialed for assaulting a senior officer.
The military court declared him mentally unfit for the job.
He was also under suspicion after a suicide attack on the naval war college in Lahore
in 2008but was not detained, the official said.
“The suspect arrested earlier said Ahmed provided information about the base to a
militant network,which carried out the attack.”
The Pakistani Taliban, which is allied to al Qaeda, claimed responsibility for the attack
on the Mehran base,but many analysts believe they had inside help.
A group of between four and six militants besieged the base for 16 hours and
destroyed two P-3C Orion aircraft from the Unites States, crucial for Pakistan’s maritime
surveillance capabilities.

Afghan blast kills top police general, injures NATO commander

Afghan policemen inspect the outside of the governor office in Takhar province on Saturday. The Taliban took responsibility for the suicide bombing. (Reuters/Wahdat)

Beginning of Story Content

A suicide bomber wearing a police uniform blew himself up during a meeting at a provincial governor's compound Saturday in northern Afghanistan, killing two NATO troops and four Afghans and wounding the top German commander in the country, officials said.
Two German troops were killed and three wounded, including Gen. Markus Kneip, the NATO force's commander for northern Afghanistan, German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere said Saturday night in Berlin.
The bomber detonated his explosives vest in a room in the governor's office complex in Takhar province where high-ranking Afghan officials were meeting with members of the international coalition, said Faiz Mohammad Tawhedi, a spokesman for the governor. The governor, Abdul Jabar Taqwa, suffered burns to his head, hands and back.
"What we know is the guy who carried out the attack had a police uniform on," Tawhedi said. "How he entered the meeting room and why he was not searched, we don't know."
German Gen. Markus Kneip, right, takes a walk with German Defence Minister Thomas de MaiziereMarch in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, The German military says Kneip, NATO's top commander in northern Afghanistan, was wounded Saturday by a suicide bomb attack. Michael Kappeler/Associated Press The Taliban claimed responsibility for the late afternoon attack.
Among those killed was Gen. Daood Daood, police commander in northern Afghanistan, said Dr. Hassain Basech, health director of the province. Daood was a former deputy interior minister for counternarcotics and a former bodyguard of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic Tajik leader who commanded the Northern Alliance and died in an al-Qaeda suicide bombing two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that provoked the U.S. invasion.
The others killed were Gen. Shah Jahan Noori, provincial police chief; a secretary to the provincial governor; and one of Daood's bodyguards, the health director said.
He said another nine Afghans were wounded including a cameraman working in the governor's office and eight members of the Afghan national security forces.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said it was part of the insurgency's assassination campaign against high-ranking government officials. The bombing also was meant to undercut a military offensive the Afghan National Army was planning to launch in the north, the Taliban spokesman said.

NATO bolsters troops in the north

Violence has been on the rise in the north, where there are known hide-outs for the Taliban, al-Qaeda and fighters from other militant factions, including the Haqqani network, Hizb-i-Islami and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. NATO has sent more troops to the north and has been pushing harder into militant-held areas.
In October 2010, a bomb killed Kunduz Gov. Mohammad Omar and 19 others in a crowded mosque in Takhar province. Omar was killed just days after he warned of escalating threats from Taliban and foreign fighters in the north.
In February, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance to an Afghan government office in neighbouring Kunduz province, killing at least 30 people, including many who were waiting in line to obtain government identification cards. At least 40 others were wounded in the blast(Source:CBC).

Two Royal Marines Killed in Afghanistan

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The two Royal Marines were on patrol, disrupting insurgent activity, when they were killed by an explosion caused by an IED.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends in their time of grief."

The latest fatalities are further evidence that the Taliban is stepping up its offensive following the death of Osama bin Laden. Analysts said the campaign could affect US President Barack Obama's plans to withdraw troops in July.