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.
The intense heatwave in Pakistan and India claimed 156 more lives, raising the death toll due to oppressive heat conditions in the two countries to at least 340, media reports and officials said on Tuesday. Eighty-two people perished in the heatwave in Pakistan, with 75 deaths being reported from the central province of Punjab.
Pakistani cricket chiefs said they hoped an expected announcement on Tuesday by Jamaican police on the death of Bob Woolmer would show that their former coach was not murdered. Jamaica’s police commissioner Lucius Thomas is expected to announce that Woolmer died of natural causes.
Pakistan declared an emergency in state-run hospitals on Monday as the death toll from a sizzling heatwave rose to 47, officials said. Temperatures have soared to more than 50 degrees Celsius in some parts of central Punjab and southern Sindh provinces since Friday, the meteorological office said.
The India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh cricket boards will discuss the possibility of reducing the duration of the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Officials from the four South Asian Test-playing nations, who will co-host the next World Cup, will meet in Pakistan on June 18, a senior Pakistan Cricket Board official said.
People who urinate in public are ruining Islamabad’s image as the cleanest, most civilised city in Pakistan, a newspaper said on Monday. In a front-page article under the headline ”Public peeing: It’s disgusting, but who cares?” the Daily Times said the problem is caused by the expensive, unhygienic and often broken facilities provided by city authorities.
A robber who tried to hold up a bank using a baby doll and a blood pressure pump was in custody on Wednesday after his heist failed, a Pakistani newspaper reported. The 25-year-old burst into the bank in Karachi on Monday brandishing the doll, which he claimed was a bomb, and the pump, which he said was a hand grenade.
The Pakistani prime minister’s charm failed to work its magic on steely United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice according to a new biography of her, the <i>Dawn</i> daily reported on Monday. The book describes in excruciating detail how Shaukat Aziz allegedly tried to impress Rice when she visited South Asia in March 2005, according to the newspaper.
Former Pakistan captain Inzamam-ul-Haq on Friday hit back at an official report that described him as a ”dictator” and blamed him for the team’s disastrous World Cup showing. The Pakistan Cricket Board inquiry concluded that Inzamam’s attitude was ”haughty and that of a dictator” and said he should have been removed as captain before the World Cup.
An inquiry into Pakistan’s shock first-round exit from the cricket World Cup has blamed the arrogant attitude of captain Inzamam-ul-Haq, accusing him of acting like a dictator. The three-member committee, which revealed its findings on Thursday, added that lack of planning and poor discipline were also behind Pakistan’s dismal performance in the Caribbean.
A bomb planted in a hotel reception killed at least 25 people in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday, a provincial official said. The blast occurred at a hotel owned and frequented by Afghans, near a well known mosque in the heart of the capital of Pakistan’s volatile North West Frontier Province.
Pakistan’s biggest city was tense but quiet on Sunday a day after at least 34 people were killed when pro-government and opposition activists clashed as the country’s suspended top judge tried to meet supporters. A judicial crisis over government attempts to remove Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has escalated into the worst political street violence Pakistan has seen since the 1980s.
Twenty-seven people were killed and 100 wounded in Karachi on Saturday in clashes between pro-government and opposition activists as Pakistan’s suspended top judge tried to hold a rally with his supporters. Heavy gunfire erupted in several parts of Karachi as gunmen battled and smoke billowed from more than 100 burning vehicles.
Eighteen people were killed in Karachi on Saturday in clashes between pro-government and opposition activists over the arrival of the country’s suspended top judge to rally support for his cause. Opposition leaders said Karachi was under siege by supporters of the pro-government Muttahida Qaumi Movement.
Pakistan’s Test opening batsman Imran Farhat was fined half his match fee on Friday for criticising the chief selector, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) said. Farhat made a strong-worded phone call to the PCB’s chief selector Salahuddin Ahmed after batsman was not picked up for the one-day international series against Sri Lanka.
A Pakistani investigator on Tuesday said that a probe into the cause of death of national cricket coach Bob Woolmer was still inconclusive. Woolmer (58) was found dead in his Jamaican hotel room on March 18, the day after Pakistan crashed out of the World Cup by losing to minnows Ireland.
Pakistan said on Tuesday it expects to hear ”conclusive” word in about two weeks’ time on how national cricket coach Bob Woolmer died during the recent World Cup.
Jamaican investigators ”will take 10 to 15 days to come out with a conclusive report” on the cause of Woolmer’s death, a senior Interior Ministry official told reporters.
The Pakistan Cricket Board has named all-rounder Shoaib Malik as captain of the national team following the resignation of Inzamam-ul-Haq in the wake of the side’s early World Cup exit. The 25-year-old, who has played in 18 Tests and 137 one-day internationals, was handed the role until the end of the year for the Test and one-day squads.
A Pakistani terror suspect extradited from South Africa and held for 18 months in Islamabad without charge has been detained for alleged links to the 2005 London suicide attacks, his lawyer said on Wednesday. Khalid Mehmood Rashid (25) appeared before a federal review board at the Supreme Court in Islamabad for the first time last week and his detention was extended by three months.
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Pakistan’s Inzamam-ul-Haq has said the World Cup would have been halted anywhere else in the world other than the Caribbean after the suspected murder there of coach Bob Woolmer. Inzamam also suggested the death of Pakistan coach Woolmer was due to a security lapse.
More than 50 people, most of them foreigners, have been killed in clashes between al-Qaeda-linked militants and Pakistani tribesmen on Friday, Pakistan’s interior minister said. Fighting in the South Waziristan tribal region broke out earlier this month between foreign fighters, most of them believed to be Uzbeks, and Pashtun tribesmen.
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Pakistan cricket board officials suspect that the death of coach Bob Woolmer was due to natural causes and that the Jamaican police acted hastily by declaring it a murder. A senior official of the board said they had received information that there could have been mistakes in the first autopsy on Woolmer’s body.
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Angry fans told Pakistani cricketers to ”go to hell” as they returned home on Wednesday, still reeling from the murder of coach Bob Woolmer and their humiliating World Cup exit. ”Why have you come back?” one fan shouted as the players were protected by dozens of uniformed police.
Fierce battles between tribesmen and foreign al-Qaeda militants in north-west Pakistan have left up to 160 people dead, including 130 Uzbeks and Chechens, a provincial governor said on Friday. Between 25 and 30 tribesmen also died in the clashes that erupted on Monday in the South Waziristan tribal zone bordering Afghanistan.
Tribesmen loyal to the Pakistani government fought fierce battles with foreign al-Qaeda militants for a third day on Wednesday, leaving more than 100 people dead, officials said. Pakistani troops also shelled the Uzbek militants sheltering in the mountainous tribal area of South Waziristan, security officials and residents said, although a military spokesperson denied the army was involved.
Relentless rain triggered landslides and roof collapses across northern Pakistan, leaving at least 67 people dead, officials and reports said on Wednesday. At least 37 survivors of the devastating 2005 earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir were killed when landslides swept away their mountainside homes, a police spokesperson said.
Up to 30 people, at least half of them foreign al-Qaeda-linked militants, have been killed in two days of fighting with Pakistani tribesmen near the Afghan border, a military spokesperson said on Tuesday. A battle between foreign militants, most of them Uzbeks, and the area’s ethnic Pashtun tribesmen erupted on March 6.
Pakistani security forces captured one of the Taliban’s three most senior leaders just hours after United States Vice-President Dick Cheney’s unannounced visit to Pakistan earlier this week. The capture of Mullah Obaidullah Akhund marked the first Pakistan arrest of a senior leader of the Islamist militia since it was driven from power in Afghanistan in 2001.
Pakistan pace bowlers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif have been ruled out of the World Cup due to injury, a senior cricket board official said on Thursday. The double withdrawal comes just five months after the pair tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone and were banned by their national board before an appeal panel cleared them to play again.