Posts published in November 2016

PESHAWAR: Without mincing words, Afghan ambassador to Pakistan Dr Hazrat Umar Zakhilwal said on Sunday that trust deficit was bedeviling relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In an interview with The News, he said the Afghans knew that who had imposed war on them. “I still believe that Kabul and Islamabad can find out solutions of the problems confronting them,” he said. Umar Zakhilwal, who is also Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s special envoy to Pakistan, observed…

WASHINGTON: The Afghan government lost control or influence between May and August over two percent of the territory it controlled, the US government´s top watchdog on Afghanistan said in a report on Sunday, a sign of the precarious security situation in the country and challenges posed by the Taliban and other militant groups. Fifteen years after the United States invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban rulers who had harboured al-Qaeda militants who attacked the United…

A huge weapons cache belonging to the Taliban group was discovered and destroyed n southern Helmand province of Afghanistan, the Ministry of Interior (MoI) said Sunday. The cache was discovered during an operation conducted in Nahr-e-Saraj district of Helmand as the Taliban militants were looking to use the weapons and explosives for the terrorist attacks. “Last night, Afghan National Police (Special Units) launched a security operation in Nahar Saraj district of southern Helmand province,” Moi…

At least 19 militants belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group were killed in an airstrike in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan. The Ministry of Interior (MoI) said the airstrike was carried out in Dangam district and at least 8 militants of the terrorist group were also wounded. According to a statement by MoI, A BM-1 rocket launcher and a Dshk heavy machine gun belonging to the terrorist group were also destroyed in the raid. MoI further…

At least nine insurgents were killed in a foreign troop’s airstrikes in eastern Kunuar province, local official said on Monday. The airstrike took palace in Dangam and Ghaziabad districts of the province in which a number of weapons of the insurgents were also destroyed, a spokesman for the Provincial Governor, Abdul Ghani Musamim said. There are no civilian casualties in the airstrike, he said. However, he did not provided more details about the airstrikes. Recently,…

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Besieged Afghan officials in the southern province of Oruzgan said on Sunday that scores of regular Afghan soldiers had surrendered in the past week to the Taliban, a trend also occurring recently in other provinces. The latest case involved 41 Afghan National Army soldiers who surrendered and turned their base, the Mashal base in Chora District, over to the insurgents on Saturday night, according to Dost Mohammad Nayab, the spokesman for the…

ISLAMABAD: Law enforcement agencies have initiated combing operations in Peshawar after startling revelations by an arrested member of terrorist outfit Daesh about active sleeper cells operating in its surrounding areas, the sources told The News here on Sunday. According to the information, the law enforcement agencies recently arrested an alleged member of Daesh who was using four names — Hamza, Abdullah, Raja and Raju — to communicate with other members and facilitators of this terrorist…

A commander of Daesh militants who was in charge of training suicide attackers was killed in a Taliban attack in Farah province, local officials said on Sunday. The commander named Abdul Razaq Mehdi, was killed in the Taliban attack while ago in Golestan district of the province and is confirmed now, district governor of Golestan, Ajmal Zahid said. He added that Golestan shares border with southern Helmand province and therefore Taliban and Daesh insurgents can…

As the relationship between Pakistan and India goes from bad to worse, the threat of nuclear war is on the horizon. Both countries have been engaged in an arms race since their inception and the acquisition of nuclear weapons was seen as something of a success by both sides. However since then, every skirmish and harsh exchange raises the possibility of one side initiating an attack which would prove devastating for the entire south Asian…

On Sunday, India’s Border Security Force (BSF) announced yet another ‘massive’ assault on Pakistani troops in the Keran sector along the Line of Control, claiming to have killed at least 20 people on the Pakistani side. Some voices in the Indian media believe these casualties to be an “appropriate response” to the alleged death and later mutilation of an Indian soldier in a Friday attack near the working boundary. As always, unarmed civilians and unnamed…