Pakistani police have arrested seven men belonging to an al-Qaeda-linked militant group who were planning to attack high profile targets in the country’s biggest city, Karachi.
The militants, which were believed to belong to the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LEJ) group, were arrested in a raid in the upmarket Defense neighborhood where they had rented a bungalow, Superintendent of Police Fayyaz Khan said late on Sunday.
“All of these militants belong to the LEJ and they were planning to attack important government buildings and senior government officials,” Khan said.
PHOTO: AFP
“We have recovered three suicide jackets, four AK-47 rifles, four pistols and 15kg of explosives,” he said.
Pakistan, a nuclear-armed US ally, has seen an intensification of attacks by Islamist militants over the past two years.
It has responded since April with army offensives against militant strongholds in the northwest.
Karachi is Pakistan’s commercial hub and home to its main stock exchange and central bank.
Many foreign companies involved in Pakistan also have offices there.
Khan said one of the detained men, Muhammad Shahzad, had also been involved in planning an attack on former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and another attack on former Pakistani prime minister Shaukat Aziz.
The Sunni Muslim LEJ is one of Pakistan’s most notorious al-Qaeda-linked groups that began by targeting minority Shiite Muslims.
It later graduated to more audacious attacks, such as the truck bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel in September last year in which 55 people were killed, the government says.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told CNN on Sunday that security forces had in the past month foiled a militant attack on the parliament building in Islamabad.
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
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
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition