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Suicide blast in Peshawar mosque claims at least 30 lives, injures more than 50

(Friday 4 March, 2022) A suicide blast inside a Shia mosque shook Peshawar’s Kocha Risaldar area on Friday,At least 80+ people have been reported injured.Suicide bomber blew himself up in front of pulpit: eyewitness An eyewitness identified a person as dressed in black as the suicide bomber, saying he entered the mosque, shot and killed the security guard first and then fired five to six bullets. “After that, he quickly entered the [mosque’s] main hall and blew himself up in front of the pulpit. Following this, there were bodies and injured people lying everywhere,” the eyewitness told Geo News.”The hall was filled with people; they were on the bottom and top floors; the incident took place at 12:55pm,” he said. Peshawar police Chief Muhammed Ejaz Khan said the violence started when two armed attackers opened fire on police outside the mosque. One assailant and one policeman were killed in the gunfight, and another policeman was wounded. The remaining attacker then inside the mosque and detonated a bomb. Evidence has been collected from the site, according to a tweet by the Peshawar CCPO account, adding it was too early to say anything about the nature of the blast. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.

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Army chief urges to remain vigilant against any ‘misadventure’

News DeskFebruary 11, 2022

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa has reiterated to remain “vigilant to respond befittingly to any misadventure by the adversary”, the military said in a statement. According to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the army chief attended the Colonel Commandant Ceremony at Ordnance Centre in Karachi’s Malir district. He installed Major General Syed Shahab Shahid as Colonel Commandant of Ordnance Corps. Gen Qamar appreciated the Corps for their role in war and peace, especially during war against terrorism. A large number of serving and retired officers and soldiers from Ordnance corps attended the ceremony. The COAS also visited PAF Air War College Institute in the port city. Addressing the participants of the 35th Air War Course, he appreciated the thorough professionalism of PAF and its enviable achievements.The army chief urged the officers to make consistent efforts to keep abreast with modern developments and maintain cutting edge advantage. He said that superiority in the modern-day battlefield can only be maintained if “we remain alive to contemporary challenges and are prepared to tackle them in line with emerging modern concepts”.“We must remain vigilant to respond befittingly to any misadventure by the adversary,” the COAS was cited by the ISPR as saying. Earlier on arrival in Karachi, Gen Qamar was accompanied by Lieutenant General Muhammad Saeed, Commander Karachi Corps.

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Pakistan likely to remain on FATF grey list until June

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is likely to remain on the so-called grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for another four months — i.e. until June — for a couple of unmet targets under the additional criteria. The concluding session of the plenary meeting of the FATF, a Paris-based global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, is due on Friday (today) and includes Pakistan’s review on the agenda. Pakistan is now targeting the full completion of the 2021 action plan on anti-money laundering and combating terror financing (AML/CFT) by the end of January 2023. Pakistan has been on the grey list for deficiencies in its counter-terror financing and anti-money laundering regimes since June 2018.

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K-3 nuclear power plant to begin operations from March

(APP- February 11, 2022)

ISLAMABAD: The seventh nuclear power plant, formally known as K-3, is expected to achieve Commercial Operation Date (COD) by March 2022. According to sources familiar with the matter, after the commissioning of K-3 and decommissioning of K-1, the total installed capacity of six nuclear power plants would reach 3,620MW. The power plant being set up at Karachi is in the final stages of commissioning. The plant is likely to begin commercial operation by next month after the completion of operational and safety tests. With the induction of K-2 and K-3 into the national grid, the share of nuclear power in the energy mix would exceed 10 per cent. Upon receiving a formal fuel load permit from the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA), the authorities concerned had completed loading fuel to the nuclear power plant earlier. A new era in the nuclear power development programme of Pakistan had commenced with the signing of ‘Agreement for Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy’ between the governments of China and Pakistan in 1986. The contract for the construction of two more units (K-2 and K-3) was signed on February 18, 2013. These nuclear plants near Karachi have a generation capacity of 1100 megawatts each.(Courtesy Express Tribune)

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Pakistan allows first shipment of Indian wheat to Afghanistan

(By The Associated Press)  24 Feb 2022

ISLAMABAD: Indian authorities have sent tons of wheat to Afghanistan to help relieve desperate food shortages after they struck a deal with Pakistan to allow the shipments across the shared border. Some 41 trucks, which entered Pakistan from Afghanistan through the Torkham crossing, stacked to the brim with around 2,500 tons of wheat donated by India, began crossing back into Lahore through the Wagah border late Tuesday, according to a statement by the Foreign Office. A Ministry of Commerce official confirmed the development to Al Jazeera, with a World Food Programme (WFP) representative saying the food aid would be distributed by the United Nations agency.I thank the Indian government for the generosity displayed at a time when more than 20 million Afghans are facing a crisis or the worse levels of food insecurity in more than 3 decades,” tweeted Farid Mamundzay, Afghanistan’s ambassador to India. Under a deal with New Delhi, Pakistan allowed trucks from Afghanistan to collect wheat from India by way of the frontier crossing at Attari-Wagah. The trucks will then head for Afghanistan’s city of Jalalabad via the Torkham border, foreign ministry officials there said. The decision from Pakistan came more than three months after India said it would deliver 50,000 metric tons of wheat and life-saving medicine to Afghanistan, whose economy is teetering on the brink of collapse in the wake of the Taliban takeover in August. Pakistan in recent months has also sent food and medicine to Afghanistan.

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