Pakistani security forces have found no sign of Osama bin Laden hiding in a mountainous region bordering Afghanistan and suspect the terrorist leader may not be there, the top military commander in the area said.
US authorities have long said they believe bin Laden is in the rugged tribal region, but there has been no firm evidence of his whereabouts for three years. Pakistani leaders have gone back and forth on whether they believe the al-Qaeda chief is in their territory.
Lieutenant General Safdar Hussain, the top commander in northwest Pakistan, said late Tuesday that his forces have scoured the region looking for bin Laden, but with no success.
"Everything is in our view, if Osama bin Laden was there we would know. He cannot hide there. He is not there," Hussain told reporters in Peshawar city.
Pakistan, a key ally of the US in its war on terror, has arrested more than 600 al-Qaeda suspects, but none of the senior figures have been caught in the border region.
They have mostly been nabbed in cities in other parts of the country.
However, Hussain said there are still hundreds of militants, many who are suspected to have ties to al-Qaeda, in the region.
He said that since March, security forces have killed 246 of them, 100 of which were foreigners, and arrested 579. About 170 army and paramilitary troops have also been killed in the crackdown, he said.
"Our war against foreign terrorists will continue ... until we are successful. We will rest after the foreign terrorists are eliminated," he said.
In the latest fighting in the area, five Pakistani soldiers were killed and seven wounded by suspected Islamic militants who attacked a convoy on Tuesday, intelligence sources said.
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened to take action against the EU if it moves forward with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the bloc’s first associate member. “If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act; I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” Trump told reporters en route to an event in North Carolina, calling the proposal “laughable.” “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe,” he said. Von der Leyen made the proposal
The US military came close to boarding a Chinese vessel in the Middle East earlier this year based on a flawed intelligence report prepared with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), CNN said on Friday. US intelligence indicated the ship was carrying nuclear weapons-related components, leading US forces to prepare to intercept it, the broadcaster reported, citing four anonymous sources familiar with the incident. However, the operation was called off after officials determined that an AI chatbot used by an analyst had misidentified the material the ship was carrying. The report was “entirely false,” but “almost started a war,” CNN quoted one source
French President Emmanuel Macron today embarks on a rare and symbolic visit to a remote French territory in the North Atlantic, hosting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at a time of growing tensions with Washington. The three-day visit to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a three-island archipelago of less than 6,000 people just 25km off Newfoundland, would be the first by a French president in more than a decade. The trip to France’s only remaining possession in North America, a vestige of the huge territories Paris once controlled in what is now Canada and the US, carries immense symbolic resonance. Macron insists that US
SEEKING AN AGREEMENT: The Cambodian foreign minister said Phnom Penh aimed to build trust through the mediation process, not further escalate tensions Thailand yesterday said that Cambodia was playing the victim in a dispute over maritime resources, as the Southeast Asian neighbors took their feud to international mediators a year after deadly clashes over their land border. Cambodia, which initiated the case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in Singapore, said it hoped the hearings would yield a peaceful resolution for both countries. In May, Thailand unilaterally pulled out of a bilateral framework agreement that aimed to resolve overlapping maritime border claims, but denied any link to their land dispute. Cambodia subsequently initiated a UN-backed conciliation process at the PCA, saying it hoped to
RSS