Pakistani forces have killed 1,500 al-Qaeda and Taliban militants during a two-month operation in a remote tribal zone, while 73 troops have also been killed, the military said yesterday.
In the offensive launched in early August in the region of Bajaur, bordering Afghanistan, troops also captured a major strategic town at the center of militant supply routes, it said.
Islamabad has previously hailed its operation in Bajaur as proof that it is responding to US and Afghan demands to take action against extremists in Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal areas.
PHOTO: AP
“More than 1,500 militants have been killed during the operation and security forces have gained major successes,” Pakistani Major General Tariq Khan, head of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC), told reporters visiting the region.
“Some 42 army men and 31 FC men embraced martyrdom,” Khan told a press conference in Khar, the main town in Bajaur, adding that “172 regular troops were injured while 95 FC men were wounded in the fighting.”
He said the key town of Loisam, whose capture by hundreds of militants in early August sparked the operation, “has been captured after stiff resistance.”
Security forces have captured more than 300 foreign militants, mainly from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, in the operation, he said.
But he said that the operation “could go for several months before the area is completely cleared of militants.”
Pakistan’s tribal belt became a safe haven for hundreds of al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists who fled the US-led war against Afghanistan’s hardline Taliban regime in late 2001 and have since set up training camps.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS