Pakistan

GILGIT: The Karakoram Highway (KKH), which had been blocked at multiple locations between GB’s Diamer and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kohistan due to landslides amid rain and snowfall, reopened for traffic on Wednesday. The highway was blocked on Tuesday evening, and Diamer Deputy Commissioner Ataur Rehman Kakar told Dawn that it reopened for traffic on Wednesday at around 4pm. He said rain, however, was still pouring, and there were chances of “rockfalls and landslides”. The Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) had earlier issued an alert for an increased risk of glacial lake outburst flood, snow avalanches, and landslides in GB and upper KP till March 12. Due to the blockages, thousands of passengers, including patients, elders, and children travelling towards GB or to other parts of the country, remained stranded at multiple locations on Tuesday night. According to Diamer police, landslides had occurred at multiple locations in Diamer and Kohistan districts on Tuesday. The landslides blocked the KKH at multip...

KARACHI: Several routes in Karachi, including the M.A. Jinnah Road, were closed for traffic on Wednesday while the main Youm-i-Ali procession set off from Nishtar Park and culminated at Imambargah Hussainia Iranian. Strict security arrangements were in place as the country observed Youm-i-Ali to mark the martyrdom day of Hazrat Ali. A statement by the traffic police said: “Due to security reasons, M.A. Jinnah Road from Gurumandir to Tower and from Saddar Dawakhana, Empress Market to Regal Chowk will remain closed.” There was no confirmation of the roads being reopened until the last updates were received at around midnight. Earlier, a statement issued by the East Zone police said the main procession had departed from Nishtar Park, with Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Dr Farrukh Ali and other senior officers present at the gathering’s head. A strict monitoring and checking system was established at the entrance and exit routes of the procession and gatherings through walk-through gates, metal detectors and CCTV...

Norwegian police said on Wednesday that three brothers had been arrested on suspicion of a “terrorist bombing” over a weekend explosion at the US embassy in Oslo, which caused minor damage but no injuries. Police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told a press conference the brothers, who were Norwegian citizens of Iraqi origin, had been arrested in Oslo around 3:30pm local time (2:30pm GMT), and that police were investigating the motive. “We are still working from several hypotheses. One of them is whether this is an order from a government entity,” Hatlo said. “This is quite natural given the target — the US embassy — and the security situation the world is in today,” he said. Hatlo said the investigation would seek to clarify exactly what roles the brothers, who were in their 20s and not previously known to police, had played. “We believe that one of them is the person who placed the bomb outside the embassy and that the other two were complicit in the act,” Hatlo told reporters. Hatlo also said that they were not...

ISLAMABAD - Minister for National Food Security and Research, Rana Tanveer Hussain, on Wednesday reaffirmed the government’s commitment to transform Pakistan’s agricultural research system into a globally competitive, efficient and innovation-driven network, ensuring that scientific research delivers tangible solutions for.

LAHORE - President of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) Nawaz Sharif and Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif held a meeting with Governor of the Tashkent, Zoir Mirzaev, who called on them in Lahore along with a seven-member delegation to discuss avenues of bilateral cooperation.

LAHORE - Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has assigned the task of eliminating illegal weapons across the province to the Crime Control Department (CCD) and directed authorities to launch a comprehensive campaign against the prevailing weapons culture after Eid al-Fitr.

The United States was responsible for a Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school because of a targeting mistake, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. The newspaper, citing US officials, said the investigation into the February 28 attack was ongoing but preliminary findings were that the United States was responsible. The US military was conducting strikes on an adjacent Iranian base of which the school building was formerly a part and target coordinates were set using outdated data, it said. President Donald Trump suggested earlier this week that Iran itself may have been responsible but later said he could “live with” whatever the investigation reveals. Asked by reporters about the Times report on Wednesday, Trump said: “I don’t know about it.” Iran has said the strike on the elementary school in the southern city of Minab killed more than 150 people. The Times said US Central Command officers created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the Defence Intell...

ISLAMABAD: Tehreek Tahaffuz Ayeen-i-Pakistan called on Wednesday for the government to take the opposition and Parliament into confidence on defence pacts and policies matters “in light of the changing regional situation” so that decisions related to national security were taken with national consensus. The demand was listed in a resolution that was passed during a joint parliamentary meeting of the PTI and other opposition parties at the Parliament House in Islamabad, according to a post on the TTAP’s X account. The resolution included demands pertaining to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, as well as tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It said that participants of the meeting expressed “deep concern” over the situation in the region and condemned US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Tensions in the Middle East escalated into a conflict after Israel and the US launched a joint attack on Iran on Feb 28 and assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was the Islamic republic’s supreme leader. The opposition ...

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