National Guard | Pakistan

An Afghan national accused of shooting two National Guard members will be charged with first-degree murder, a US official said Friday, after one of the soldiers died of her wounds as Donald Trump pledged to suspend migration from “third-world countries.” The announcement marks an escalation in charges facing the assailant, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who the US media said was part of the “Zero Units” — a CIA-backed Afghan paramilitary force. “There are certainly many more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges of assault to murder in the first degree,” Jeanine Pirro, the attorney for Washington, DC, told the Fox News programme ‘Fox & Friends’. “It is a premeditated murder. There was an ambush with a gun toward people who didn’t know what was coming.” Pirro’s announcement comes after Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged on Thursday to “seek the death penalty” against Lakanwal, describing him as a “monster.” Pirro said Lakanwal opened fire with a .357 Smith and Wesson revolv...

The Foreign Office (FO) on Friday strongly condemned the shooting of two soldiers of the United States’ National Guard in Washington, DC, saying that the incident “heralds a troubling resurgence of terrorism on a global scale”. Two National Guard soldiers were critically wounded on Wednesday after being shot a few blocks from the White House, with US President Donald Trump terming the incident an “act of terror”. Trump has since announced that one of the soldiers had died. In a press release, the FO said, “Pakistan strongly condemns the shooting incident in Washington DC, reportedly involving an Afghan national. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the departed soldier, and (we) wish the injured a swift and complete recovery,” it said. It also extended sympathies to the families affected, as well as to the government and people of the US. The FO said the attack was “undoubtedly an act of terrorism and a heinous assault on US soil”. “For the past two decades, Pakistan has endured countless similar terrorist inci...

The man suspected of shooting two National Guard soldiers near the White House on Wednesday was an Afghan national who worked alongside US forces in Afghanistan, US media reported. Washington has labeled the violence an “act of terror” and announced increased oversight of foreigners who entered the United States from Afghanistan in recent years. What we know about the suspected shooter Multiple media outlets, including CNN, The New York Times, CBS and NBC identified the man as 29-year old Rahmanullah Lakanwal and say he arrived in America in 2021. A relative of Lakanwal told NBC that he arrived after serving in the Afghan army for 10 years in support of US Special Forces. The relative told NBC that Lakanwal originally came from Afghanistan’s southeastern Khost province and had spent some of his military service at a base in the southern province of Kandahar. Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban and was the center of heavy fighting during the 20-year war between the then-insurgents and foreign-backed forc...

US FBI Director Kash Patel said on Thursday that the suspected shooter of two National Guard members had worked in Afghanistan with partner forces. “We are fully investigating that aspect of his background as well to include any known associates that are either overseas or here in the United States of America, that is what a broad-based international terrorism investigation looks like,” Patel said at a news conference. The suspect worked with “the US government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,” during the US war in Afghanistan, CIA Director John Ratcliffe told the New York Times and Fox News. The two soldiers, part of a militarised law enforcement mission ordered by President Donald Trump months ago and challenged in court by Washington DC officials, were hospitalised and had come through surgery, Attorney General Pam Bondi said. The suspect, who was wounded in an exchange of gunfire before he was arrested, was identified by the Department of Homeland Security as Rahmanullah Lakanwa...

Two US National Guard soldiers were critically wounded on Wednesday after being shot in a brazen daytime attack a few blocks from the White House, with US President Donald Trump terming the incident an “act of terror”. The incident, which left two Guard members critically wounded, was “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror,” Trump said. “It was a crime against our entire nation.” He confirmed that the man taken into custody after the daylight shooting two blocks from the White House was “a foreigner who entered our country from Afghanistan”. The suspect had arrived in the United States in 2021 “on those infamous flights,” Trump said, referring to the evacuations of Afghans fleeing as the Taliban took over the country in the wake of the US retreat after 20 years of war. “We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan” under former president Joe Biden, Trump said. “We must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who d...

United States President Donald Trump on Monday deployed military and federal law enforcement to curb violent crime in Washington, as he seeks to make good on his campaign pledge to be a “law and order” president. The Republican leader said he would place the city’s Metropolitan Police under federal government control while also sending the National Guard onto the streets of the US capital. The overwhelmingly Democratic city faces allegations from Republican politicians that it is overrun by crime, plagued by homelessness and financially mismanaged — although violent offences are down. “This is Liberation Day in DC, and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump said. Trump — a convicted felon who granted blanket clemency to nearly 1,600 people involved in the 2021 US Capitol riot in Washington — has complained that local police and prosecutors aren’t tough enough. He said 800 DC National Guardsmen — “and much more if necessary” — would be deployed to the city of 700,000. As Trump was speaking at the White H...

A US appeals court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump to maintain his deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles amid protests over stepped-up immigration enforcement, temporarily pausing a lower court ruling that blocked the mobilisation. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision does not mean that the court will ultimately agree with Trump, but it does leave the command of the Guard with the president for now. Earlier on Thursday, San Francisco-based US District Judge Charles Breyer found that Trump’s deployment of the Guard was unlawful. Breyer’s 36-page ruling had ordered the National Guard to return to the control of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who had brought the case. It was a short-lived victory for Newsom, as Breyer’s order was paused about two and a half hours later. Asked for a comment, Newsom’s press office referred to the governor’s statement after the initial ruling and noted that the appeals court put a temporary pause on the ruling but did not reverse it. “I’m confide...