Pakistan reeled from an upsurge in violence by Islamic militants yesterday after bloodshed erupted again in Karachi and troops clashed twice with al-Qaeda-linked fighters in tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden may be hiding.
Thirty-five foreign militants and 15 troops were killed in gunbattles near the northwestern tribal town of Wana on Wednesday, the military revealed yesterday. Three civilians were also killed in the crossfire, raising the toll to at least 53.
PHOTO: REUTERS
The clashes marked the first eruption of fighting between troops and al-Qaeda-linked combatants since the army wound down a major offensive late March after losing 46 troops, and opened talks by offering amnesty to them if they agreed to register and lay down arms. They have refused to register.
Down on the Arabian Sea coast, one of the army's top generals, Karachi corps commander Lieutenant General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, survived a brazen attack on his convoy on Thursday as he was driven to work through an upmarket beach suburb.
Gunmen sprayed his convoy with bullets, killing seven soldiers, three policemen and a pedestrian.
The military said the attack was a clear bid to kill the commander.
It is the first time a senior military figure -- other than President Pervez Musharraf -- has been directly attacked in Pakistan and marked a turn in the kind of violence which has riven Karachi for decades and intensified over the past month.
"It is now the leadership of the institution the militants are targetting. It is certainly a new dimension and a more serious one," a senior security official told reporters, pointing out that most attacks in Karachi have been religious, ethnic, political or anti-Western in nature.
Hayat is one of the Pakistani army's 11 corps commanders, who fall directly under the army chief and deputy chief.
The strike on his convoy was the sixth deadly attack in Karachi in just over a month.
Two devastating suicide bomb attacks on mosques packed with worshippers from the Shiite Muslim minority, the assassination of a senior cleric from the Sunni Muslim majority, a double car bomb attack near the US consul general's residence, a parcel bomb at the port and three days of riots left 51 dead.
Pakistan's commercial capital is a hotbed of Islamic extremists and its crowded apartment blocks have been used as hideouts by several senior al-Qaeda fugitives, including alleged Sept. 11 terror attack planners Ramzi bin al-Shaibah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.
Law enforcers see the upsurge in violence as a gang war between police and militants, following a series of arrests of hardline Islamic extremists linked to attempts to kill Musharraf as well as suicide attacks in 2002.
But some officials said it could be connected to the army's renewed offensive against al-Qaeda-linked fighters in the northwest.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS