A suspected drone attack on Sunday reportedly killed as many as six militants, after several missiles were fired on a car in the Datta Khel area of North Waziristan (Dawn, ET, AJE, AFP, CNN). Pakistani officials reported Friday that up to 13 militants, possibly including Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander Taj Gul Mehsud, were killed last week in a drone strike on a compound in Mir Ali (Reuters). The rash of strikes recently prompted criticism this weekend from Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani as well as Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar (Dawn, ET).
A PPP minister in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Amjad Khan Afridi, survived an attack by militants on his vehicle Monday, while in Karachi an activist for a party linked to the banned Sipah-e-Sihaba Pakistan (SSP) was killed by unidentified gunmen (Dawn, AFP, Dawn). Elsewhere in the province, a suicide bomber killed two policemen Sunday in Nowshera (BBC). Pakistani law enforcement on Sunday arrested a former commando with the country's elite Special Services Group (SSG) on charges that he planned an attack against Pakistan's parliament (ET). Dawn reports that police in Karachi are hesitant to file charges against a "hit man" blamed for nearly 250 killings in the city (Dawn). And for the fourth time since September, an anti-terrorism court in Rawalpindi has delayed the indictment of seven men accused of involvement in the 2007 killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (Dawn).
Five stories round out the weekend: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced Friday that Pakistan had not asked for a new loan package after its current arrangement expired last month (The News). Pakistani officials denied reports from a German newspaper that Pakistan "spied" on a group of German police officers deployed in Afghanistan (Dawn). A woman in Balochistan threatened to set herself on fire in front of the province's parliament if her brother, who she said was taken away by Pakistani security services in September, was not released (ET). New information indicates that polio remains resilient in Pakistan despite drives to eradicate the disease (Dawn). And Balochistan has reportedly seen a major increase in cattle smuggling to neighboring Afghanistan and Iran (ET).
تبصرے