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Pakistan asks IEA to hand over TTP leaders
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Sunday called on the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) to hand over leaders of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other members of the group.
At a press conference in Lahore, Naqvi said the attack, in which five Chinese engineers and their Pakistani driver were killed, was planned in Afghanistan and executed with the help of handlers and facilitators based in Pakistan.
He added that the attack was “completely operated” from Afghanistan and planned to specifically target Chinese personnel in Pakistan.
“TTP leadership planned this attack as a flagship project, and enemy intelligence agencies paid them heavily for the attack,” the minister said, without giving more details.
The minister demanded IEA arrest three individuals named Bakhtiar Shah, Qari Abdullah and Khan Lala, along with TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud, its Malakand Commander Azmatullah and the entire leadership of the group.
“We want good ties with Afghanistan, but for that it is important they arrest these terrorists, prosecute them or hand them to us.”
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have soured in recent months. Islamabad says Kabul is not doing enough to tackle militant groups targeting Pakistan.
“Pakistan has raised this issue with the interim government of Afghanistan and stressed that they should act against the terrorists operating there, but so far, we have not received any good results,” Naqvi said.
He said that militants were “exploiting the weakness of the interim Afghan government”.
When asked what Pakistan would do if the Afghan government doesn’t cooperate, Naqvi said then “the government will take a unilateral decision”.
The interior minister’s remarks came almost two weeks after Pakistan military spokesman Major-General Ahmed Sharif said the attack was planned in Afghanistan, and the suicide bomber was also an Afghan national.
National Counter Terrorism Authority (Nacta) coordinator Rai Tahir, who also addressed the press conference, said that the attacker, identified as Muttaqi alias Taqi, hailed from Afghanistan.
Security forces have so far arrested 11 suspects, including the alleged Pakistani handlers.
They were identified as Adil Shehbaz, Shafiq Qureshi, Zahid Qureshi, Nazeer Hussain, Faizullah, Fasihullah, Imran Swati, Sakhaullah, Abdullah, Abdul Rehman and Kamal Khan.
Rai said the attacker had travelled from Afghanistan four months before the attack and lived with his alleged Pakistani handlers — Adil Shazeb and Shafiq Qureshi — who prepared him for the attack.
The alleged suicide bomber was trained in Afghanistan’s Kunar province and was one of the four terrorists who crossed into Pakistan in Nov 2023, the Nacta chief said.
He said a Malakand-based car showroom owner allegedly helped TTP militants in smuggling the car, fitted with explosives, into Pakistan from Chaman.
When Naqvi was asked how a car fitted with explosives managed to travel around 1,000km inside Pakistan without being detected, he said security officials stopped the vehicle for checking, but no suspicion was raised.
He claimed action had been taken against officials over negligence in checking the car thoroughly.
The IEA’s defence ministry has rejected Pakistan’s allegations that Afghans were involved in an attack on Chinese engineers.
“Afghans are not involved in such matters,” Enayatullah Khorazmim, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, said earlier this month.
“Blaming Afghanistan for such incidents is a failed attempt to divert attention from the truth of the matter and we strongly reject it,” he added.
The Embassy of Japan in Afghanistan announced on Friday that the country has allocated $19.5 million in humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Japanese Embassy said it hopes the aid will help bring positive change to the lives of vulnerable Afghans.
According to the statement, the assistance will cover the basic humanitarian needs of vulnerable communities in Afghanistan.
The embassy added that the aid will be delivered through United Nations agencies, international organizations, and Japanese non-governmental organizations operating in Afghanistan.
Japan’s total assistance to Afghanistan since August 2021 has reached more than $549 million.
Security forces at the Islam Qala border in Herat province prevented hundreds of young Afghans from illegally entering Iran.
Officials from the 207 Al-Farooq Army Corps said that around 530 people attempted over the past two days to illegally enter Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district in Herat, but border forces detained them and transferred them back to their original areas.
Meanwhile, some sources said that a group of 70 people who were heading to Iran on Wednesday through areas of Kohsan district became stranded amid cold weather and snowfall, resulting in the deaths of two of them.
Sources at the Islam Qala border in Herat also confirmed that in recent days hundreds of people have illegally entered Iranian territory through areas of Kohsan district, and that due to severe cold and heavy snowfall, five of them have lost their lives.
President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program on Thursday that allowed the suspect in the Brown University and MIT shootings to come to the United States.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on the social platform X that, at Trump’s direction, she is ordering the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to pause the program, the Associated Press reported.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” she said of the suspect, Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente.
Neves Valente, 48, is suspected in the shootings at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine others, and the killing of an MIT professor. He was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, officials said.
Neves Valente had studied at Brown on a student visa beginning in 2000, according to an affidavit from a Providence police detective. In 2017, he was issued a diversity immigrant visa and months later obtained legal permanent residence status, according to the affidavit. It was not immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017.
The diversity visa program makes up to 50,000 green cards available each year by lottery to people from countries that are little represented in the U.S., many of them in Africa. The lottery was created by Congress, and the move is almost certain to invite legal challenges.
Nearly 20 million people applied for the 2025 visa lottery, with more than 131,000 selected when including spouses with the winners. After winning, they must undergo vetting to win admission to the United States. Portuguese citizens won only 38 slots.
Lottery winners are invited to apply for a green card. They are interviewed at consulates and subject to the same requirements and vetting as other green-card applicants.
Trump has long opposed the diversity visa lottery. Noem’s announcement is the latest example of using tragedy to advance immigration policy goals. After an Afghan man was identified as the gunman in a fatal attack on National Guard members in November, Trump’s administration imposed sweeping rules against immigration from Afghanistan and other counties.
While pursuing mass deportation, Trump has sought to limit or eliminate avenues to legal immigration. He has not been deterred if they are enshrined in law, like the diversity visa lottery, or the Constitution, as with a right to citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear his challenge to birthright citizenship.
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