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/ 22 November 2007
Pakistan’s Supreme Court, stacked with judges friendly to President Pervez Musharraf, on Thursday threw out a final challenge to his re-election and paved the way for him to quit as army chief. The long-awaited ruling comes as Musharraf faces the prospect of Pakistan’s second suspension from the Commonwealth.
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/ 22 November 2007
The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent think tank with long experience in the area. There is no sign of any move within Nato to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.
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/ 21 November 2007
More than 40 people have been killed in two days of fighting in a north-west Pakistani valley as troops seek to wipe out militants trying to enforce Taliban-style rule, the military and witnesses said on Wednesday. Major Amjad Iqbal, an army spokesperson, said 17 militants were killed in Swat valley’s Shangla district in gun battles overnight.
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/ 19 November 2007
Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Monday rubber-stamped President Pervez Musharraf’s contested re-election victory in October, after he purged the court of hostile judges. ”Five petitions have been dismissed. One is pending and it will be heard on Thursday,” said the Attorney General Malik Qayyum.
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/ 18 November 2007
Afghan and Nato-led troops, backed by air power, killed at least 12 Taliban fighters and wounded another 15 in an operation in southern Afghanistan, a Defence Ministry spokesperson said on Sunday. Mostly Canadian Nato troops and Taliban insurgents have been engaged in fierce fighting in the Zherai district, west of the biggest southern city of Kandahar.
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/ 17 November 2007
United States envoy John Negroponte spoke to Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Friday and said moderate forces should work together to put the country back on a democratic path.
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/ 12 November 2007
Nigeria’s secret police have arrested several people suspected of having links to the al-Qaeda network in three of the country’s predominantly Muslim states, a spokesperson said on Monday. ”Our operatives arrested the suspects in Kano, Kaduna and Yobe states,” State Security Service spokesperson Ado Muazu said.
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/ 11 November 2007
Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said on Sunday a general election will be held by January 9 — but under a state of emergency he imposed eight days ago. Musharraf, under pressure to put Pakistan back on a path to democracy, said the National Assembly and provincial assemblies will be dissolved in coming days.
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/ 10 November 2007
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto described Pakistan on Saturday as a pressure cooker about to explode, as President Pervez Musharraf’s government tightened screws on media by ordering out three British journalists. Having invoked emergency powers a week ago, Musharraf has sacked most of the country’s judges and ordered police to round up most of the opposition leadership.
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/ 10 November 2007
Benazir Bhutto was going nowhere. A phalanx of riot police stood at the end of her leafy street, tapping their shields and manning a barbed-wire barricade. Armoured vehicles rolled in. Officers even prowled the neighbours’ gardens, just in case the opposition leader might vault her back wall.
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/ 9 November 2007
A suicide bomber blew himself up at the house of a Pakistani minister in the north-western city of Peshawar on Friday, killing four people, police said. Federal Minister for Political Affairs Amir Muqam, who is also the local head of President Pervez Musharraf’s ruling party, told state television that he was unharmed in the blast.
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/ 8 November 2007
Pakistani national elections will take place before February 15, President Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday, after Western allies and opponents had demanded polls be held on time and emergency rule scrapped. Pakistan had been scheduled to hold elections by mid-January until the general imposed emergency powers on Saturday.
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/ 7 November 2007
Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto threatened on Wednesday to lead a mass protest march to the capital unless President Pervez Musharraf quits as army chief, holds elections and restores the Constitution. Bhutto, the politician most capable of mobilising street power, gave Musharraf until Friday to comply.
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/ 7 November 2007
Afghans began three days of national mourning on Wednesday for 41 people, many of them children, killed in the country’s worst suicide attack to date. The attack shakes public confidence in the ability of the Afghan government and the 50 000 foreign troops in the country to provide security.
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/ 6 November 2007
Pakistan’s opposition grappled for a united response on Tuesday to President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule, leaving lawyers to protest alone for a second day and bear the brunt of a police crackdown. Ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry said ”the people should rise up and restore the Constitution”.
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/ 6 November 2007
A suicide attack on a parliamentary delegation killed at least 50 people in northern Afghanistan on Tuesday, a provincial official said, in the worst such blast in the country’s history. Five members of the Afghan Parliament were among the dead and the toll was expected to rise among the delegates and schoolchildren who were among the victims.
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/ 6 November 2007
Pakistani police beat and arrested lawyers protesting for a second day on Tuesday against President Pervez Musharraf’s emergency rule, while officials under United States pressure said an election would be held in early 2008. Opposition politicians, including Benazir Bhutto, have spoken out but there has been no real action on their part so far.
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/ 5 November 2007
Pakistani police used tear gas and batons to crush protests by lawyers against President Pervez Musharraf on Monday, despite world outrage at the imposition of a state of emergency. The White House said it was ”deeply disturbed” by the crisis, urging Musharraf, a key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, to quit his military post.
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/ 5 November 2007
Pakistan police used tear gas and batons on Monday against lawyers protesting at President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule and detentions mounted, prompting Washington to postpone defence talks. Musharraf cited spiralling militancy and hostile judges to justify Saturday’s action, and slapped reporting curbs on the media.
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/ 4 November 2007
Police detained Pakistani opposition figures and lawyers on Sunday as military ruler President Pervez Musharraf tried to stifle the outcry over the imposition of emergency powers. The United States and other Western allies condemned General Musharraf’s decision to announce emergency rule on Saturday.
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/ 4 November 2007
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has imposed a state of emergency in a bid to end an eight-month crisis over his rule stoked by challenges from a hostile judiciary, Islamist militants and political rivals. General Musharraf said he decided to act on Saturday in response to a rise in extremism and what he called the paralysis of government by judicial interference.
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/ 1 November 2007
A suicide bomber rammed an air force bus in Pakistan on Thursday killing eight people while troops killed up to 70 militants in the north-west, as rumours swirled that President Pervez Musharraf could invoke emergency rule. Nearly 800 people have been killed in militant-linked violence and there have been more than 22 suicide attacks in the last four months.
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/ 31 October 2007
A suicide bomber on a motorcycle rammed a Pakistan Air Force bus — killing at least eight people and wounding 40 — near the central city of Sargodha on Thursday, the military said. The security situation in Pakistan has deteriorated sharply in the past few months at a time of political uncertainty.
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/ 31 October 2007
Afghan and Nato forces have killed 50 Taliban rebels in three days of clashes and surrounded 200 others who occupied civilian homes in southern Afghanistan, police said on Wednesday. Civilians were fleeing on motorbikes, tractors, cars and animals piled with their belongings amid the fighting, provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib said.
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/ 30 October 2007
A suicide attack killed at least seven people, including the bomber, less than a kilometre from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s army residence in Rawalpindi on Tuesday. The attacker blew himself up next to a police checkpoint metres away from the gates to the residence of one of Musharraf’s most senior officers, General Tariq Majid.
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/ 30 October 2007
The United Nations on Monday demanded that the Taliban stop killing aid workers and looting aid convoys so that emergency supplies can reach vulnerable Afghans. Tom Koenigs, head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, said 34 aid workers had been killed by the Taliban and criminal gangs and 76 abducted so far this year.
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/ 30 October 2007
Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed called crisis talks on Tuesday to find a new prime minister as the country’s shaky government faced a mounting challenge from Islamist rebels.
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/ 30 October 2007
A suicide attack killed at least seven people, including the bomber, less than a kilometre from Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s army headquarters in Rawalpindi on Tuesday, police said. Three police officers and three passers-by were among those killed, while 11 people were wounded in the blast.
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/ 28 October 2007
Benazir Bhutto visited a family whose son was killed in the suicide blasts that targeted the former Pakistan premier’s homecoming, as she kept up a tightly secured trip on Sunday to her ancestral home. Bhutto made a jubilant return to her family district in rural southern Pakistan on Saturday.
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/ 28 October 2007
United States-led coalition and Afghan troops killed about 80 Taliban fighters in a six-hour battle following an ambush in southern Afghanistan, the US military said on Sunday. Taliban fighters opened fire on Saturday with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades on the joint coalition and Afghan army patrol from a trench near Musa Qala in Helmand province.
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/ 27 October 2007
Thousands of supporters cheered Benazir Bhutto as she visited her ancestral village amid tight security on Saturday, her first trip in Pakistan since last week’s devastating bombings. Bhutto, the first female leader of an Islamic nation, travelled to the remote corner of southern Pakistan to offer prayers at her family’s mausoleum.
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/ 27 October 2007
Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto set off for her ancestral village in southern Pakistan on Saturday, security heavy in the wake of an assassination attempt at a Karachi welcome rally last week that killed 139 people.