Pakistani security forces yesterday raided a suspected hideout of the Pakistani Taliban in the southwestern city of Quetta, triggering a shootout that killed four officers and a militant commander, officials said.
The police launched the raid after being tipped off that the wanted militant commander was hiding in a home in the city’s Kuchlak neighborhood, police official Naveed Shah said.
The officers demanded that the suspect surrender, but he instead opened fire at the security forces, killing four officers before being fatally shot, Shah said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
A search of the area was still under way, he said.
Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, has had a spike in violence recently, as has the rest of Pakistan.
On Monday, two roadside bombs that exploded hours apart targeted police vehicles in Quetta, killing four people and wounding 22, mostly pedestrians.
The bombings were claimed by the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, which was designated a terrorist group by the United States in 2019.
Pakistani security forces have been battling an insurgency in Balochistan for more than a decade, with separatists in the province demanding complete autonomy or a larger share of the province’s gas and mineral resources.
The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also have a presence in Balochistan and have claimed multiple past attacks there.
The militant group is separate from but allied with the Afghan Taliban.
Insurgents have been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as US and NATO troops pulled out of the country after 20 years of war.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS