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U.S. drone strike kills 15 Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan
A U.S. drone strike killed at least 15 Pakistani militants in Afghanistan’s Gomal district on Wednesday, intelligence officials said on Friday, part of an intensifying drone campaign against Pakistani militants in Afghanistan.
Three Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed Wednesday’s strike in an area bordering Pakistan’s South Waziristan region.
“Fifteen dead bodies of killed militants will be shifted soon to their native areas in Dera Ismail Khan,” one intelligence official said, referring to a town in northwestern Pakistan.
Three officials confirmed the 15 militants belonged to the Gandapur faction of the Pakistani Taliban led by Mullah Fazlullah, who claimed responsibility for the massacre of more than 130 pupils at an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar last December.
Tracking of drone strikes in Afghanistan is patchy – many of them take place in remote regions and are not reported – but Taliban commanders say that fighters there have been increasingly targeted since late last year.
The strikes come a week after Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed to end a blame game over a spate of militant attacks and work to restore trust.
Traditionally hostile neighbors, the two countries accuse each other of doing too little to prevent Taliban fighters and other Islamist militants from operating on their territory.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani made closer ties with Pakistan a priority when he took office last year, hoping Islamabad could push Afghan Taliban leaders to the negotiating table to end Afghanistan’s long war.
The relationship appeared to yield fruit in July with groundbreaking official peace talks with the militants.
But after confirmation of the death of the group’s founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, the process was suspended and the Taliban launched a wave of attacks in Kabul, killing more than 50 people and souring relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s foreign policy chief visited the Afghan capital Kabul last week for a regional economic conference and also held meetings with the president, foreign minister and national security adviser.
But officials on both sides said peace talks with Afghan Taliban leaders were not discussed.
Written by: Reuters
The Ministry of National Defense of Afghanistan (MoD) has strongly rejected Pakistan’s claim that the recent attack on Chinese nationals in Pakistan was planned from the territory of Afghanistan.
Late last month five Chinese nationals and one Pakistani were killed in a suicide bombing near Besham, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, Inayatullah Khwarazmi, said that Daesh came from Pakistan to the territory of Afghanistan and its goals were organized from there.
He said that Pakistan should respond to these actions.
Khwarazmi, said that in an area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is under the security of the Pakistan Army, the killing of Chinese nationals is either the weakness of the security institutions or their cooperation with the attackers.
Khwarazmi says that the Islamic Emirate has assured China that Afghans are not involved in such incidents.
The territorial tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are on the rise again. In the latest issue, Islamabad has accused Kabul of harboring terrorist networks.
Pakistan’s intelligence service has claimed that the Besham attack was planned in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry claimed on Tuesday that there is “irrefutable evidence” of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) using Afghanistan against the country.
“There is irrefutable evidence of Afghan soil being used by the TTP […] recent terrorist incidents can be traced back to Afghanistan,” Sharif said while addressing a press conference.
Reaffirming the commitment on counter-terrorism efforts, Chaudhry said that Pakistan will leave no stone unturned to eliminate the terrorist network.
He stressed that the security forces would go to any extent possible against terrorists. However, the spokesperson noted that the first priority of the Pakistan Army was to maintain law and order in the country.
“The army chief has said that there’s no place for terrorists in Pakistan,” the spokesperson said while reassuring that steps are being taken to bring the miscreants to justice.
On the issue of Afghan refugees living inside Pakistan, he said: “Millions of Afghans are still living in Pakistan, while the country is fighting against terrorism. Pakistan has helped Afghan refugees, which the world has recognised.”
Highlighting that millions of Afghan citizens continue to reside in Pakistan, he revealed that more than 563,000 Afghans have been repatriated.
He said the law and order situation was deteriorating because of the Afghan citizens.
“Militants are spoiling the law and order situation in Balochistan, but the army is [acting as] a wall against the miscreants,” he noted.
The Islamic Emirate has previously denied the presence of TTP in Afghanistan and said that Pakistan’s security problem has nothing to do with Afghanistan.
The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said on the last day of a three-day seminar on the coordination and regulation of specialist and religious universities in Kandahar that after the establishment of the Islamic Emirate, all the opponents were forgiven and they now live together like brothers.
Speaking at the seminar Monday, Akhundzada added that he is satisfied with the performance of his acting ministers as they always obey him.
“I am happy with my ministers and they are good people and always obey me. Obey, value and honor them because honor and obedience are not exclusive to the Amir [leader], but include all the commanders,” Akhundzada said.
He also said that the world wants to separate politics from religion, so that even in Islamic countries, scholars do not have a role in politics; but according to him in Afghanistan, scholars should have access to politics.
He asked scholars to follow the orders of the Islamic Emirate to encourage the nation to implement and obey the orders.
Ziaullah Hashimi, the spokesman of the Ministry of Higher Education, says that the three-day seminar brought together department heads, deputies and professors of the General Directorate of Specialist and Religious Universities of the Ministry of Higher Education.
The seminar started on Saturday and ended Monday.
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