Hundreds of Islamists occupied Pakistan’s Red Mosque on Friday, painting the walls in their original colour and wrecking the official reopening of the complex after a bloody army assault on militants. Protesters chased out a government-appointed religious elder who was meant to lead the first Friday prayers at the Islamabad mosque since the military operation there earlier this month.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court reinstated the country’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on Friday four months after his suspension by President Pervez Musharraf. Chaudhry became a symbol of resistance to General Musharraf after refusing to quit in the face of pressure from the president and his intelligence chiefs.
Two suicide bomb attacks killed at least 33 people in Pakistan on Thursday as a militant backlash intensified following the army’s storming of radical mosque in Islamabad earlier this month. A wave of bomb attacks since a siege and assault on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, complex, a militant stronghold in the capital, has swept across Pakistan.
Sitting cross-legged on a carpet in Karachi’s largest Islamic school, cleric Mufti Muhammad Naeem voiced fears of civil war if President Pervez Musharraf escalates his fight against militancy in Pakistan’s north-west. ”Musharraf has chosen a dangerous path,” said Naeem.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday ruled out declaring an emergency in an effort to stem a tide of militant attacks that have killed more than 130 people this month. In the lastest violence, militants killed 17 soldiers in the North Waziristan region a day after a suicide bomber killed 16 people in the capital.
The Pakistan Cricket Board confirmed former Australian fast bowler Geoff Lawson as their new cricket coach on Monday. Board chairperson Nasim Ashraf told a news conference that Lawson had been preferred over two other short-listed candidates, Dav Whatmore and Richard Done.
Several thousand Pakistani Islamists rallied on Friday to denounce the government for ordering an army crackdown on a radical mosque in the capital, Islamabad. Protests were held in several towns and cities across the country after Friday prayers but none was very big and there were no reports of trouble.
Pakistanis buried bodies on Thursday from among more than 70 followers of a revolutionary cleric, a day after commandos killed the last few gunmen hiding in the ruins of the Red Mosque. Anger ran deep in tribal parts of north-west Pakistan, though sentiment in most of the country sided with President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to send in the army.
Pakistani security forces were securing the last parts of a mosque and school complex on Wednesday, a day after an assault that killed a rebel cleric, more than 50 Islamist fighters and eight soldiers. Many questions were unanswered including the final death toll and whether any women or children had been killed.
Pakistani forces killed a rebel Islamist leader and more than 50 of his militants on Tuesday after 15 hours of fighting in an Islamabad mosque compound at the climax of a week-long siege. Militants mounted a last stand in the basement of a religious school where cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed, the Interior Ministry said.
Pakistani forces stormed a mosque compound in the capital on Tuesday, killing at least 40 militants who were believed to be holed up with hundreds of women and children. With more than two-thirds of the complex cleared, commandos had yet to encounter any of the women and children.
Religious scholars gathered outside a besieged Pakistani mosque on Monday, asking Islamist militants to send out dead and wounded along with women and children, a day after authorities gave "a final warning" to surrender.
Pakistani commandos blew holes in the walls of a mosque compound on Sunday in hope hundreds of women and children could escape, while security forces besieged a revolutionary cleric leading Islamist gunmen inside. Troops have surrounded the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad since Tuesday.
A Pakistani cleric said a bid to shoot down President Pervez Musharraf’s plane was apparently in revenge for the bloody government siege of his mosque, in which he alleged that 70 students had died. The claim came as fighting intensified on the fifth day of the stand-off between radicals holed up in the bullet-scarred Red Mosque in Islamabad and security forces
Heavy exchanges of fire erupted on Friday between Islamist militants holed up in a Pakistani mosque and security forces after the militants’ leader said he and his hundreds of followers would rather die than surrender. Earlier, gunmen fired at Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s plane as it took off from Islamabad’s military airport.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s plane was fired on as it took off on Friday from a military airfield in Rawalpindi, an intelligence officer said, contradicting official denials. Musharraf’s plane arrived safely in the south-western town of Turbat, where the president visited flood victims, and the military denied there had been any attack.
Isolated shots rang out as a group of worried parents entered a besieged mosque in Islamabad on Friday to collect children caught up in a deadly stand-off between Islamic radical students and security forces. A cleric leading the Taliban-style movement at Red Mosque said overnight that he and hundreds of followers were willing to surrender.
Small groups of radical students trickled out from Islamabad’s besieged Red Mosque on Thursday, despite warning blasts overnight, raising fears hardcore militants were keeping some children as human shields. The captured leader of the mosque’s Taliban-style student movement said there were 850 students inside.
Pakistani security forces fired a series of ”warning blasts” before dawn on Thursday near Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque, stepping up pressure on hundreds of militant students inside to surrender, a security official said. There were about eight explosions at intervals of several minutes, witnesses said.
Fresh gunfire erupted at a besieged mosque in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday as about 1 000 militant students showed their defiance after 700 others surrendered to the government. Helicopter gunships circled overhead and armoured personnel carriers surrounded Lal Masjid, or the Red Mosque.
About 700 radical Muslim students surrendered at a besieged mosque in the Pakistani capital on Wednesday, but thousands of militants remained inside a day after 16 people were killed. Hundreds of soldiers and police sealed off the mosque and imposed an indefinite curfew in the neighbourhood after Tuesday’s bloodshed.
Pakistani security forces fought fierce gun battles with students at a pro-Taliban mosque in Islamabad on Tuesday after a lengthy stand-off exploded into violence, leaving nine dead and 140 hurt. Clerics at the radical Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, threatened suicide attacks to avenge the "blood of martyrs" after the day-long clashes.
Water levels are falling in some parts of flood-hit Pakistan, enabling rescuers to reach areas cut off for days, but more bad weather is on the way, officials said on Monday. Pakistan has been battered by early rainy-season storms and flooding. More than 650 people have been killed across the region in the past 10 days.
Pakistani police fired tear gas on Friday to break up a protest by angry cyclone survivors as rescuers struggled to reach communities cut off by floods affecting 900 000 people. Meanwhile, in India, tens of thousands of people fled an approaching storm.
A cyclone hit the coast of Pakistan on Tuesday, dumping torrential rain over a thinly populated region days after about 230 people were killed when a storm lashed the country’s biggest city, Karachi. Authorities in Pakistan and neighbouring India have evacuated thousands of people from low-lying areas after weekend storms and flooding killed nearly 400 people.
Storms and torrential rain have killed more than 200 people in Pakistan’s biggest city, Karachi, a provincial minister said on Sunday, and left angry residents without power. More bad weather is forecast for Pakistan and neighbouring India, where dozens have died after prolonged downpours across the country in the last few days.
More than 200 people were killed as torrential rain and thunderstorms lashed the Pakistani port city of Karachi on Sunday, destroying hundreds of homes and causing widespread power outages. Gale-force winds uprooted trees and power pylons and blew down roofs and walls, crushing and electrocuting scores of victims.
Forget Freddy Krueger and Norman Bates — here comes Burqa Man. The first serious Pakistani horror flick for a quarter of a century features a psychopath dressed in a blood-soaked version of the traditional garb of Islamic women. Hordes of zombies, including an undead dwarf, add to the gore in the self-financed Zibahkhana (Hell’s Ground).
Pakistani traders on Thursday announced a reward of 10-million rupees (%165 000) for anyone who beheads Salman Rushdie following Britain’s decision to award the novelist a knighthood. The announcement came during a protest by 200 traders at Aabpara market, one of the main bazaars in the capital, Islamabad.
A missile attack killed at least 17 pro-Taliban militants and wounded 10 in a Pakistani tribal region near the Afghan border on Tuesday, according to independent television news channels. The blast occurred at a militant training camp near Datta Khel district, about 60km west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan.
Pakistan on Monday deplored Britain’s decision to award a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie, whose novel The Satanic Verses outraged many Muslims around the world. Rushdie was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in Queen Elizabeth’s birthday honours list published on Saturday.
Pakistan’s cricket chief said on Wednesday it was time for the national team to move on after Jamaican police revealed that coach Bob Woolmer was not murdered after all, and died of natural causes. Nasim Ashraf, chairperson of the Pakistan Cricket Board, said he was glad to see the end of a ”traumatic” three months.