President of Pakistan, visited Military Hospital, Rawalpindi
Doctor Arif Alvi, President of Pakistan, visited Combined Military Hospital (CMH) Rawalpindi. He met with the officers and soldiers who got injured while clearing CTD complex Bannu. President praised their bravery and resolve to fight against terrorism.
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COAS visited Miranshah – North Waziristan and Tarbela
Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Syed Asim Munir visited Miranshah North Waziristan and Tarbela. At Miranshah, COAS laid floral wreath at Martyrs’ Monument to pay homage to brave soldiers who laid lives while defending the motherland. COAS was briefed by field commanders on latest security situation in the area and response mechanisms to thwart terrorist threat. COAS also visited frontline troops deployed along Pakistan – Afghanistan Border. While interacting with officers and men, COAS commended their professionalism, high morale and operational readiness. COAS said that Pak Army remains focused on evolving security situation and determined to take the battle to the terrorists and break nexus with their facilitators so as to ensure lasting peace through socioeconomic development. Pakistan Army will consolidate the hard earned peace, made possible by the supreme sacrifices of resilient Pakistani nation and LEAs. Later, COAS also visited HQ SSG Terbela. COAS met officers and men of SSG including the elite Zarrar Company whose soldiers gallantly acted in recent Bannu CTD complex operation as well as Aviation. COAS praised their indomitable spirit, sacrifices and commitment to the duty in various operations. COAS said that SSG is the pride of Nation and it had proved it’s metal over the years. Earlier on arrival, COAS was received by Lieutenant General Hassan Azhar Hayat, Commander Peshawar Corps.
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Operation initiated in Sambaza area of Zhob, Balochistan
An Operation has been initiated in Sambaza area of Zhob, Balochistan for last 96 hours to deny Terrorists use of few suspected routes to move across Pakistan- Afghanistan Border to sneak into KP along interprovincial boundary and target citizens and security forces. As a result of continuous Surveillance and sanitisation of the area, a group of the Terrorists was intercepted in early hours today. During the establishment of blocking positions to deny them escape routes, terrorists opened fire onto the Security Forces. During ensuing heavy exchange of fire, 1 Terrorists was killed, while Sepoy Haq Nawaz embraced Shahadat and two other soldiers got injured. The terrorists were supported by their facilitators from across the border as well through fire. The sanitization Operation continues in the area to apprehend remaining perpetrators.
Funeral prayer of Capt. Fahad offered at Army Graveyard
Namaz e Janaza of Captain Muhammad Fahad Khan, who embraced shahadat yesterday in IED Blast near Kahan Balochistan, was offered at Army Graveyard Rawalpindi, today. CJCSC General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, General Syed Asim Munir, Chief of Army Staff (COAS), and a large number of senior civil and military officers, soldiers, citizens and relatives of Shaheed attended the Namaz e Janaza. Shaheed was buried with full military honour.
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Bannu CTD operation: Pakistan army kills all 25 militants Three Soldiers Martyred; 10 Terrorists in Custody: ISPR
All the hostages had been freed by the army in the operation. Pakistan army’s elite commandos killed 25 militants who had seized the Counter Terrorism Department police station in Bannu, the military’s media wing said in a late night announcement on Tuesday 20 December. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said the soldiers from the Special Service Group (SSG) foiled the militants’ attempt to escape the facility after their demand to provide them a safe passage to Afghanistan was rejected. The ISPR denied that the SSG commandos came under attack from the outside, adding that the great sacrifice rendered by the army soldiers “raise our level of love for the country”. Giving details of the incident, Director General ISPR Major General Ahmed Sharif said on December 18, a detained terrorist overpowered a constable in the CTD complex inside Bannu Cantt. After snatching the constable’s weapon, Maj Gen Ahmed said, the terrorist freed 34 other detained comrades. “As soon as they came out of lockup, the terrorists got more weapons from the mall and started firing,” the DG ISPR said, adding that terrorists killed one CTD constable and injured another. “Three sons of the soil were martyred fighting bravely in the operation. Subedar, Major Khurshid Akram, Sepoy Saeed, and Sepoy Babar are among the martyrs.” He further said 10 soldiers, including two officers, were injured in the operation. Senior Bannu police officials had told The Express Tribune on Sunday that two CTD men had been killed by the militants. They added that the hostage-takers wanted a safe passage via a ground route or by air to Afghanistan. However, the authorities refused to accept their demands and insisted on their surrender. Pakistani authorities had on Monday 20th December, opened talks to try to resolve the stand-off, but “all options failed and the terrorists refused to free innocent people, so we decided to use force”, a senior security official told Reuters. With input from agencies.
Captain among five Pak Army personnel martyred in Balochistan IED blast
As many as four Pakistan Army men including a captain got martyred on Sunday during an intelligence-based operation underway in Kahan area of Balochistan since 24 December 2022 against terrorists when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded closed to the leading party of the army personnel amid the rising wave of terrorism particularly in Balochistan. According to a statement issued here by the Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Directorate, due to the explosion of the IED, Captain Fahad along with four other brave sons of the soil Lance Naik Imtiaz, Sepoy Asghar, Sepoy Mehran and Sepoy Shamoon embraced Shahadat, laying their lives in defence of the motherland against an externally perpetrated threat of terrorism. The Pakistan Army has reaffirmed its resolve to fight terrorism, saying that such cowardly attacks cannot sabotage the peace and prosperity in Balochistan. Earlier, four people were wounded in a grenade attack near a police station on Sabzal Road in Quetta. Terrorists have unleashed a fresh wave of attacks in different areas of Pakistan in recent days. On Friday, a policeman was martyred in the federal capital Islamabad when a suicide bomber blew himself up during the search of a vehicle in the I-10 Sector. Source: News Desk.
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At least six killed in firing by Afghan forces on Pakistan border
Heavy gunfire and artillery shelling by Afghan border forces have killed six civilians across the border in Pakistan and wounded another 17, the Pakistan army said. The latest violence hitting Chaman in southwestern Pakistan follows a series of deadly incidents and attacks that have skyrocketed tensions with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers. Chaman is the main border crossing for trade between the countries. Pakistani troops retaliated at the Chaman border crossing, the army statement said, without giving details of any losses on the other side. The Pakistan army statement said: “Afghan Border Forces opened unprovoked and indiscriminate fire of heavy weapons including artillery/mortar onto the civilian population.” Pakistan had also approached Kabul to highlight the severity of the situation and demand strict action to avoid recurrence of the incident, the army said. A deadly shooting in November shuttered the border at Chaman for eight days, causing heavy commercial losses and leaving thousands of people stranded on both sides. Later in the month, Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul came under gunfire. Pakistani officials called the incident an attack on its envoy there and blamed Afghan officials for the security breach. Source: TRTWorld and Agencies.
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One policeman martyred in suicide blast in Islamabad’s I-10; TTP claims responsibility
A policeman was martyred and at least six people including four police officers and two civilians were injured in a suicide blast in Islama bad’s I-10/4 sector on Friday, police officials said. According to Deputy Inspector General of Police Sohail Zafar Chattha, the police spotted a “suspicious vehicle” with a man and a woman aboard at 10:15am in the area. “When the police stopped the vehicle, the couple came out of the car. The long-haired man, while being checked by the officers, went inside the vehicle on some pretext and then detonated himself,” he said in a media briefing at the crime scene alongside Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Irfan Nawaz Memon. Chattha said a police officer of the Eagle Squad was martyred in the blast while four others officers were injured. He lauded the police for “saving Islamabad from a major foul play”. “The vehicle used in the blast was registered in Chakwal. The car entered Islamabad from Rawalpindi […] it was packed with explosives and headed for a high-value target in the capital,” he said. Sanaullah added that had the car reached its target, it would have caused heavy losses. The outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement released. Courtesy: Dawn News.
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India, Pakistan foreign ministers trade heated barbs on ‘terror’ ‘Butcher of Gujarat, epicentre of terror’: A war of words at UN
Pakistan’s foreign minister has called India’s prime minister the “Butcher of Gujarat” after his counterpart accused his country of being the “epicentre of terrorism” as the nuclear-armed neighbours engage in a war of words at the United Nations. The heated exchange between Pakistan’s Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and India’s Subrahmanyam Jaishankar came after the UN Security Council adopted a statement on Thursday, warning of the increasing dangers of terrorism. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of harbouring armed fighters who launch attacks on its soil, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 175 people dead, including nine attackers. The Mumbai attackers were allegedly members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba armed group. Indian investigators say their actions were directed over the phone by handlers in Pakistan.
Heated accusations
Talking to reporters after the UN meeting, Jaishankar called Pakistan the “epicentre of terrorism”. “My advice is to clean up your act and try to be good neighbour,” he said. “Hillary Clinton, during her visit to Pakistan, said that if you keep snakes in your back yard you can’t expect them to bite only your neighbours, eventually they will bite the people who keep them in the back yard,” he added. When Bhutto-Zardari was asked to respond to Jaishankar’s allegation, he said the Indians continue to say “Muslim and terrorist together”, whether in Pakistan or in India. India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi was chief minister of the state of Gujarat when religious riots in 2002 killed nearly 2,000 people most of them Muslims. Modi was accused of turning a blind eye to the violence. Until his election as prime minister in 2014, he was denied entry to the United States. Bhutto-Zardari said his country had lost far more lives to terrorism and that he, himself, was a victim, referring to his mother and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated by a suicide bomber in 2007. Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim-majority country in 1988. “As a Muslim, as a Pakistani, as a victim of terrorism, I believe it is time that we move away from some of the Islamophobic narrative framing of this issue that took place after the awful attacks of September 11, 2001, because what we witnessed from that date up until now is that terrorism, of course, knows no religion, knows no boundaries,” Bhutto-Zardari said. “Why would we want our own people to suffer? We absolutely do not,” he added. Source: Al Jazeera & News Agencies.
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Country’s brain drain situation accelerated in 2022
According to documents available to The Express Tribune, 765,000 people left Pakistan for abroad in 2022, nearly triple the 225,000 departures in 2021 and 288,000 emigrants in 2020. This year’s data also included 92,000 highly-educated people such as doctors, engineers, information technology experts and accountants. According to the Bureau of Emigration, an overwhelming majority of the emigrants went to the Middle Eastern countries, mainly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Among the European destinations, the preferred choice of the Pakistanis appeared to be Romania. “The effects of the deteriorating economic situation as well the political uncertainty have begun to affect the workforce of Pakistan,” a bureau official told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity because he was not officially authorised to speak with the media. According to the documents, those who left the country in 2022, included more than 92,000 graduates, 350,000 trained workers and the same number of untrained labourers went abroad. The documents also showed that 736,000 people went to the Gulf States. The emigrating educated youth included 5,534 engineers, 18,000 associate electrical engineers, 2,500 doctors, 2,000 computer experts, 6,500 accountants, 2,600 agricultural experts, over 900 teachers, 12,000 computer operators, 1,600 nurses and 21,517 technicians. The group of unskilled workers comprised 213,000 drivers. According to the data, over 730,000 youth went to the Gulf States, nearly 40,000 went to European and other Asian countries. The country-wise break down of the data showed 470,000 Pakistanis headed to Saudi Arabia for employment, 119,000 to UAE, 77,000 to Oman, 51,634 to Qatar and 2,000 to Kuwait. Also, according to the official documents, 2,000 Pakistanis went to Iraq, 5,000 to Malaysia, 602 to China, 815 to Japan, and 136 to Turkey. The documents also revealed that 478 Pakistan went to Sudan in Africa in search of employment. The highest number of people emigrating to a European country was 3,160 youth, going to Romania. It was followed by 2,500 to Great Britain, 677 to Spain, 566 to Germany, 497 to Greece, and 292 to Italy. The Bureau of Emigrants also registered 700 people going to the United States. More than half of those leaving the country were from Punjab. The documents said 424,000 emigrants this year were from Punjab, 206,000 from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa plus 38,000 from newly-merged tribal districts, 54,000 from Sindh, 27,000 from Azad Kashmir, 7,000 from Balochistan and 6,000 from Islamabad. Courtesy: Express Tribune.