Islamist militants striking military and civilian institutions across Pakistan are employing a host of deadly new tactics that have rattled the experts as well as ordinary Pakistanis.
A high-ranking military officer was shot dead in broad daylight in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad Thursday despite tight security clampdowns as the military conducts an anti-Taliban offensive in South Waziristan.
Pakistan’s Minister for Religious Affairs, Hamid Saeed Kazmi (pictured left) was injured in a gun attack in the capital of Islamabad Wednesday that killed his driver. A moderate cleric, Kazmi has been a vocal opponent of the Taliban.
Officials say Taliban fighters have withdrawn from Buner district, just 100 kilometres north-west of Islamabad, after seizing control of the area earlier this week. Taliban advances have caused mounting alarm in the US and Islamabad.
A Taliban regional spokesman says its fighters will withdraw from Buner, a region just 100km from Islamabad, after seizing control of the district earlier this week. Taliban advances have caused mounting alarm in the US and Islamabad.
Taliban militants have assumed control of a district in Pakistan some 100 kilometres from the capital. Hundreds of armed fighters set up checkpoints, occupied mosques and began patrolling streets in the Buner district northwest of Islamabad.
American UN official John Solecki, the local head of the UNHCR in Pakistan, was freed on Saturday. Solecki was kidnapped in the southern city of Quetta two months ago.
A suicide blast near a police checkpoint in Islamabad killed at least eight soldiers, according to Pakistani authorities. The attack comes days after gunmen stormed a police academy in the Pakistani city of Lahore.
The International Monetary Fund has approved an $847.1 million loan to Pakistan as part of an emergency loan to help bolster the impoverished nation’s economic stabilization program.
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who was sacked as Pakistan's chief justice in 2007 by ex-President Pervez Musharraf, resumed his post Sunday following mass protests by lawyers and opposition parties that forced the government to buckle down.
