Pakistani security forces killed at least 29 militants in ground and air operations along the Afghanistan border, Islamabad said yesterday, while the Afghan Taliban said at least 38 civilians were killed in airstrikes.
Sunday’s aerial assault was Pakistan’s second on targets in Afghanistan it said belonged to militants, and threatened to exacerbate an intermittent conflict between the former allies, who in February fought their worst battle in years.
Pakistan’s airstrikes on three targets in the Afghan provinces of Paktia, Paktika and Kunar killed 25 militants while destroying “large quantities” of weapons and ammunition, Pakistani Minister of Information and Broadcasting Tarar said on social media yesterday.
Photo: AFP
Four more fighters linked to the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of Pakistan’s Taliban were killed in ground attacks in the Bajaur district of its northern border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
However, Afghan government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat said the strikes killed 38 civilians and injured 163, including women and children.
The bulk of the casualties stemmed from Pakistani jets bombing a home in Paktia Province, killing 28 and injuring 158, he added.
Residents were rushing to help the wounded when there was a second strike, said Khalid Ahmad Sajad, deputy head of the district of Samkani, hit in the airstrikes.
“While they were carrying out rescue efforts, Pakistani military forces launched a second airstrike on the same location,” he told a news conference.
Tarar said Pakistan was responding to “recent multiple terrorist incidents,” including Saturday’s Jamaat-ul-Ahrar bomb and gun attack on a Sindh Rangers facility in the southern city of Karachi that killed three and injured four of its troops.
“Security forces precisely struck terrorist camps and safe havens,” he said in a social media message.
Islamabad accuses Kabul of harboring militants it blames for plotting attacks in Pakistan. The Taliban denies the accusations, saying militancy is Pakistan’s internal problem.
The leader of a South Korean church was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of election influence as authorities widened an investigation into allegations that he illegally recruited thousands of followers into the People Power Party. The Shincheonji Church has denied the accusations against Lee Man-hee, 95, a self-proclaimed messenger of Jesus who founded the congregation in the 1980s. The church says it has about 200,000 members. Since January, a special team of prosecutors and police has been investigating alleged ties between religious groups such as Shincheonji and the Unification Church, and politicians. The inquiry is part of broader investigations under South Korea’s government into
Japanese airlines canceled more than 100 flights yesterday, as two tropical storms barrelled toward the archipelago, with authorities advising evacuations in some areas because of possible flooding and landslides. Severe tropical storm Mekkhala was downgraded from a typhoon, but still carried gusts of up to 144kph, forecasters said, with heavy rain already pounding parts of southern and western Japan. The weather system was expected to skirt the islands of Kyushu and Shikoku over the weekend and potentially converge with tropical storm Higos, which was also swirling further out in the Pacific. That could result in the atmospheric phenomenon known as the
EXTREME HEAT WARNING: Across Europe, farms have suffered and hospitals have struggled to cope amid the heat wave, while dozens of people have died in France Germany and Italy yesterday endured sweltering conditions as a heatwave linked to dozens of deaths in Western Europe spread eastward after temperatures broke records above 40°C. The UK, France, Switzerland and Germany have experienced record heat this month, and the weather system could test more records as it rolls across Germany toward Poland. Scientists said the heatwave would have been virtually impossible without man-made climate change, which has made this week’s temperatures 100 times more likely than they would have been even two decades ago. On Friday, a new German record of 41.3°C was reached near the city of Saarbruecken close to the
SEVASTOPOL BLACKOUT: Forces struck a railway bridge, a power plant and other infrastructure targets in Crimea as Kyiv seeks to turn the peninsula into ‘an island’ Ukrainian strikes on Crimea triggered power outages in its largest city, Sevastopol, both sides reported yesterday, as Kyiv intensifies its attempts to cut off the peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. Crimea has been forced to suspend fuel sales to the public as Ukraine’s army targets Russian logistics to the region, and has hit a series of oil refineries and depots across southern Russia that provide supplies. Sevastopol Governor Mikhail Razvozhayev urged residents to help neighbors, and reserve phones for emergency communication to save battery and avoid overloading the grid. “The enemy is once again striking treacherously, attempting to deprive us of normal
RSS