Taliban leader Mullah Muhammed Omar is not in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan Province and the US should not carry out missile attacks in the region, a senior official said.
Western and Afghan officials have long suspected that Omar and other members of the Taliban government ousted by the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 have found refuge in or near the city of Quetta, Baluchistan’s capital.
Islamabad has challenged the US to provide it with any evidence of Omar’s whereabouts, insisting Pakistani forces will immediately move against the fugitive Taliban chief.
The New York Times reported this week that US officials were weighing extending missile strikes into Baluchistan in pursuit of Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders who have shifted from militant strongholds farther north.
The head of the Baluchistan provincial government insisted on Friday that Mullah Omar was not there.
“A person who is making war against the NATO forces, he must be present in Afghanistan, in [the Afghan province of] Kandahar or somewhere,” Nawab Mohammed Aslam Raisani said.
Raisani added that “there is no justification for drone attacks in Quetta or other parts of Baluchistan.”
He said there was a distinction between Taliban militants fighting in Afghanistan and Taliban students studying peacefully in religious schools in Pakistan.
US officials said a stepped-up program of missile strikes into Pakistan’s unpoliced tribal belt along the Afghan frontier has killed a string of top al-Qaeda figures since last year.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS