Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said yesterday that Pakistan was battling for its “sovereignty” a day after scores of people were killed amid an escalating offensive against the Taliban.
Zardari said Pakistan would fight “until the end” as US defense officials in Washington confirmed that Islamabad planned to step up its offensive against militants in the country’s troubled northwest.
“We are fighting a war for our sovereignty,” Zardari said in a TV address. “We will continue this war until the end, and we will win it at any cost. “The Taliban are the enemies of innocent people. They want to terrorize the people and to take control of the country’s institutions.”
Zardari’s pledge came after suicide bombings targeting Friday prayers at two mosques killed at least six people, including a prominent Muslim cleric, and wounded more than 100.
The bombings confirmed fears that Taliban militants are avenging an offensive against them in the northwest, where the military said on Friday 39 insurgents and 10 soldiers had been killed in fresh fighting.
Religious scholar Sarfraz Naeemi, had issued a fatwa (edict) against suicide bombings carried out by Taliban militants.
In the other attack, four people died and at least 105 were wounded when an explosives-filled car ploughed into a mosque in the northwestern garrison town of Nowshera, police said.
The roof of the mosque caved in after the blast and a number of people were trapped under the rubble, police official Imran Kishwar said, adding that the death toll could rise.
A spokesman for militant leader Baitullah Mehsud’s Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the mosque attacks, and Tuesday’s bombing of Peshawar’s Pearl Continental hotel that killed nine people.
“Anyone who will oppose us to please the Americans will face the same fate,” Maulvi Omar said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
In Washington, senior defense officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said Islamabad planned to step up its offensive against Taliban forces in the northwest tribal area of South Waziristan.
Confirming rumors so far denied by the Pakistani army, one of the officials said that in addition to the major offensive in the northwest Swat valley, Pakistan was planning “a separate campaign in South Waziristan.”
The region is a stronghold for the TTP, Pakistan’s umbrella Taliban organization, as well as for al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.
The TTP will be the primary target for the increased operations, the defense official said, but the US hopes the offensive will also put pressure on al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban, who were driven out of Afghanistan and into the region after the 2001 US-led invasion.
These groups are clearly interconnected, the official said, so “an offensive certainly can play an important role,” adding that the strategy was to “have pressure on both sides of the border.”
A 90,000-strong US and international coalition is fighting the Afghan Taliban and other insurgents on the Afghanistan side.
A second US defense official told reporters the Pakistani army has been redeploying forces to areas surrounding South Waziristan.
“We think the initial phase of the operation has already begun,” the official said.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS