Pakistani investigators were yesterday quizzing two suspects after an Islamic militant was killed by his own hand grenade in a brazen attack on Islamabad international airport, officials said.
The attack late on Tuesday was the fifth in less than two weeks in Pakistan, raising fears that Taliban militants near the Afghan border are trying to embarrass Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally, for a military crackdown on their camps.
The two suspects and the attacker were in a car which drove to the airport carpark, where he exchanged gunfire with security forces, injuring three police, after they stopped him at a checkpost. He then died in the grenade blast.
"Two people arrested at the scene are being interrogated by a joint investigation team," said Saud Aziz, the police chief of Rawalpindi, a city adjoining Islamabad, where the airport is located.
"One of them says that he was just a driver and was hired from Golra More [an Islamabad suburb] to go to the airport," he said.
Investigators were trying to match the bomber's face with police records and had fingerprinted him, he said.
The bomber's corpse, with the legs mangled by the blast, was shown to reporters after the attack.
Officials hoped the suspects could provide leads to the group behind the attack amid fears the militants were increasingly "desperate" to send a message to military ruler Musharraf's government.
Pro-Taliban fighters last month vowed to avenge an airstrike on an alleged al-Qaeda camp in the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan, which broke a nearly two-year truce between the government and militants.
"Links are pointing there, but we are still investigating," Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao said when asked if investigations into the previous attacks had provided leads to militants in the tribal region.
Militants have opposed Musharraf since he ditched Pakistan's support for the Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and launched a crackdown on extremism.
Musharraf, who arrived back in Pakistan at an adjoining military airbase hours after the attack -- returning from a trip to Iran and Turkey -- condemned the "terrorist" attack and praised the security forces for foiling it, state media reported.
The incident was no longer being considered a suicide attack because "when we searched the body we did not find any explosive belt on him," Sherpao said.
Instead, the militant armed with pistols and grenades likely planned a "hit and run attack" on crowds at the arrivals area, which failed when he panicked, said Brigadier Javed Cheema, head of the interior ministry's national crisis management cell.
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
WARNING: From Jan. 1 last year to the end of last month, 89 Taiwanese have gone missing or been detained in China, the MAC said, urging people to carefully consider travel to China Lax enforcement had made virtually moot regulations banning civil servants from making unauthorized visits to China, the Control Yuan said yesterday. Several agencies allowed personnel to travel to China after they submitted explanations for the trip written using artificial intelligence or provided no reason at all, the Control Yuan said in a statement, following an investigation headed by Control Yuan member Lin Wen-cheng (林文程). The probe identified 318 civil servants who traveled to China without permission in the past 10 years, but the true number could be close to 1,000, the Control Yuan said. The public employees investigated were not engaged in national
CAUSE AND EFFECT: China’s policies prompted the US to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific, and Beijing should consider if this outcome is in its best interests, Lai said China has been escalating its military and political pressure on Taiwan for many years, but should reflect on this strategy and think about what is really in its best interest, President William Lai (賴清德) said. Lai made the remark in a YouTube interview with Mindi World News that was broadcast on Saturday, ahead of the first anniversary of his presidential inauguration tomorrow. The US has clearly stated that China is its biggest challenge and threat, with US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly saying that the US should increase its forces in the Indo-Pacific region
ALL TOGETHER: Only by including Taiwan can the WHA fully exemplify its commitment to ‘One World for Health,’ the representative offices of eight nations in Taiwan said The representative offices in Taiwan of eight nations yesterday issued a joint statement reiterating their support for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with the WHO and for Taipei’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA). The joint statement came as Taiwan has not received an invitation to this year’s WHA, which started yesterday and runs until Tuesday next week. This year’s meeting of the decisionmaking body of the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, would be the ninth consecutive year Taiwan has been excluded. The eight offices, which reaffirmed their support for Taiwan, are the British Office Taipei, the Australian Office Taipei, the
RSS