Pakistan says Baloch separatists, local Taliban group behind attacks killing over 50 in southwest

Update  Pakistan says Baloch separatists, local Taliban group behind attacks killing over 50 in southwest
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People look burnt vehicles, torched by gunmen after killing passengers, at a highway in Musakhail, a district in Baluchistan province in southwestern Pakistan on Aug. 26, 2024. (AP)
Update  Pakistan says Baloch separatists, local Taliban group behind attacks killing over 50 in southwest
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Pakistan security forces in Balochistan province are battling sectarian, ethnic and separatist violence. (AFP file photo)
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Updated 27 August 2024
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Pakistan says Baloch separatists, local Taliban group behind attacks killing over 50 in southwest

 Pakistan says Baloch separatists, local Taliban group behind attacks killing over 50 in southwest
  • Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest but poorest province, despite an abundance of untapped natural resources
  • The Baloch Liberation Army is the most active militant separatist group in the region

QUETTA/KARACHI: Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi on Monday blamed Baloch separatists and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for multiple militant attacks and other acts of violence in the southwestern Balochistan province in the last 24 hours in which over 50 people were killed, excluding insurgents.
Pakistan’s largest province of Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan and is home to major China-led projects such as a strategic port and a gold and copper mine, has been the site of a decades-long separatist insurgency by ethnic Baloch militants, who say they are fighting what they see as the unfair exploitation of the province’s mineral and gas wealth by the federation at the center. The state denies the allegations, saying it is working for the uplift of the impoverished province through various development schemes.
The eruption of violence at multiple districts of the province on Sunday night poses a major challenge for the weak coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which is battling an economic crisis and political instability as well as a rise in militant violence by religiously motivated and separatist groups across the country. Balochistan is also currently in the grips of civil rights protests by young ethnic Baloch people, who are calling for an end to what they describe as a pattern of enforced disappearances and other human rights abuses by security forces, who deny the charge.
In the violence that began on Sunday evening, 23 passengers were taken off their vehicles in Musa Khel, a district in the northeast of Balochistan, and shot dead. In another attack, the Pakistan Army said it had killed 21 militants during a clearance operation in which 14 soldiers and police also died. Separately, 10 people, including five security forces personnel, were killed when militants stormed a paramilitary force station in Kalat, while militants also blew up a railway bridge in Bolan in Balochistan’s Kachhi district. Six as yet unidentified bullet-riddled bodies were also found near the bridge, with the circumstances of the killings unclear.
On Sunday, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups operating in Balochistan, said it had attacked a security forces’ camp in Bela area of the Lasbela district, claiming to have killed 68 “enemy personnel.”
“The TTP and many foreign elements are involved in these attacks. We will unmask them all,” Interior Minister Naqvi told reporters, saying militants operating from safe havens in neighboring Afghanistan were launching attacks in Pakistan, a charge denied by Kabul.
“We know who planned this and who is behind them. They thought carefully and conducted the attacks in a single day,” he said. “The entire leadership has decided that we will respond to them with full force.”
WIDESPREAD ASSAULT
In the first of many attacks on Sunday evening, a senior police official said passengers were taken off vehicles in Musa Khel and at least 23 were shot dead after they were identified as hailing from the Punjab province. Militants also burnt at least 35 trucks, buses and other vehicles.
“Twenty-three people were killed after armed men took them off from vehicles and goods trucks near Rara Sham, an area in Musa Khel,” Ayoub Achakzai, senior superintendent of police in the district, told Arab News on Monday morning.
The army’s media wing said soldiers and other law enforcement “immediately responded and successfully thwarted the evil design of terrorists,” killing 21 militants during a clearance operation.
“However, during the conduct of operations, fourteen brave sons of soil including ten Security Forces soldiers and four personnel of law enforcement agencies, having fought gallantly, made the ultimate sacrifice and embraced shahadat [martyrdom],” the army said.
In a televised press conference, Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti said that “people were taken off buses and killed in front of their families.”
No one has claimed responsibility for the Musa Khel killings yet but in the past, separatists in Balochistan have often killed workers from the country’s eastern Punjab province, who they see as outsiders exploiting the province. Most of such previous killings have been blamed on the outlawed BLA and other groups demanding independence from the central government in Islamabad.
In another attack, SSP Dostain Khan Dashti said ten people, including five from security forces, were killed when unidentified gunmen stormed a station of the Balochistan Paramilitary Levies Force in the central district of Kalat.
“The firing by armed men has left one policeman, four Levies personnel, and five citizens dead,” Dashti said.
Separately, Pakistan Railways suspended train services between Quetta and Sibi on Monday after a key railway bridge near the Dozan area of Bolan was blown up in wee hours of Monday. 
“Security forces have cordoned off the area and Pakistan Railways’ team has reached the site to assess the damages,” a Railways spokesman said.
“Quetta-Sibi highway is blocked for traffic after terrorists destroyed a railway bridge during early hours of Monday and the debris of the bridge fell on the highway,” Kachhi SSP Dost Muhammad Bugti told Arab News, without naming any group behind the assault.
Police in Bolan — a rugged, mountainous area of Kachhi district — said they had found six bullet-riddled bodies close to the destroyed bridge during the early hours of Monday. The circumstances of the killings were unclear and the bodies have yet to be identified.
ATTACK ON ARMY CAMP
On Sunday, the BLA said it had attacked an army camp in the Bela city of Balochistan’s Lasbela district, located around 515 kilometers from the provincial capital of Quetta.
A senior police officer in Bela confirmed the attack on the military camp.
“Security clearance operation is going on as we can still hear sounds of gunshots and explosions from the camp,” Bela police station in-charge Attaullah Jamoot told Arab News. 
The army did not comment on the attack on the Bela camp in its statement, but said militants had attempted to conduct “numerous heinous activities” in Balochistan on the night of Aug. 25-26.
“These cowardly acts of terrorism were aimed at disrupting the peaceful environment and development of Balochistan by targeting mainly the innocent civilians, especially in Musa Khel, Kalat and Labela Districts. Resultantly, numerous innocent civilians embraced shahadat,” the army said.
Video clips widely shared on WhatsApp and X showed long queues of vehicles lined up on various sections of the key Quetta-Karachi highway in the Kalat and Mastung districts of the province.
The BLA said it had “taken full control of all major highways across Balochistan, blocking them completely.”
“The situation is not good in Khad Kocha,” Abdul Shakoor, a paramilitary Levies soldier, told Arab News about an area in the Masung district, some 67 kilometers from Quetta. “There are reports that armed persons have blocked the highway, and they have blown up the Pakistan-Iran railway track near Khad Kocha.”
Shakoor said there was no confirmation as yet of any casualties.
The state-run Radio Pakistan broadcaster said “terrorists have carried out cowardly attacks at several places,” without specifying where the assaults took place.
“Security forces and law enforcement agencies responded effectively to these attacks, twelve terrorists have so far been killed and many others are injured,” the broadcaster said. “The operation will continue until the terrorists are eliminated.”
Balochistan CM Bugti said more intelligence-based operations would be launched to weed out militants, hinting at curtailing mobile data services to stop militant coordination.
“They launch attacks, film it and then share it on social media for propaganda,” he said.
Meanwhile, General Li Qiaoming, commander of China’s People’s Liberation Army Ground Forces, and Pakistan’s army chief General Asim Munir met on Monday, though a Pakistani military statement released after the meeting made no mention of the attacks.
The latest attacks coincide with the 18th anniversary of the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, a prominent Baloch politician and tribal chief who was killed in a military operation on Aug. 26, 2006, sparking deadly protests and inflaming the insurgency in Balochistan.
The impoverished province has seen an uptick in violence in the last few weeks, with separatist groups intensifying attacks ahead of and during Independence Day celebrations earlier this month, in which at least four people were killed.


Lawsuit challenges Trump administration crackdown on international students

Police detain a pro-Palestine demonstrator during a protest march in New York City on July 18, 2024. (AFP)
Police detain a pro-Palestine demonstrator during a protest march in New York City on July 18, 2024. (AFP)
Updated 7 sec ago
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Lawsuit challenges Trump administration crackdown on international students

Police detain a pro-Palestine demonstrator during a protest march in New York City on July 18, 2024. (AFP)
  • About 1,100 students at more than 170 colleges, universities and university systems have been affected since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records

WASHINGTON: A class action lawsuit filed Friday asks a federal court to reinstate the legal status of international students caught up in a Trump administration crackdown that has left more than a thousand fearful of deportation.
The suit filed by several American Civil Liberties Union affiliates seeks to represent more than 100 students in New England and Puerto Rico.
“International students are a vital community in our state’s universities, and no administration should be allowed to circumvent the law to unilaterally strip students of status, disrupt their studies, and put them at risk of deportation,” said Gilles Bissonnette, legal director of the ACLU of New Hampshire.
At schools around the country, students have seen their visas revoked or their legal status terminated, typically with little notice.
About 1,100 students at more than 170 colleges, universities and university systems have been affected since late March, according to an Associated Press review of university statements, correspondence with school officials and court records. The AP is working to confirm reports of hundreds more students affected.
Students have filed other lawsuits arguing they were denied due process. Federal judges have granted temporary restraining orders in New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Montana, shielding students from efforts to remove them from the US.
Plaintiffs in the new lawsuit, filed in federal court in New Hampshire, learned without warning their F-1 student statuses had been terminated, leaving in doubt their ability to stay in the country and finish their studies, according to the complaint.
One of them, Manikanta Pasula of India, was on the brink of getting his master’s in computer science at Rivier University in New Hampshire and applying to remain in the country through a work program for international students. Hangrui Zhang of China had come to the US for a Ph.D. program in electronic and computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. Now, he cannot work as a research assistant, which was his only source of income, the complaint said.
The government did not give notice it is required to provide before terminating a foreign student’s legal status, the lawyers said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges.
In some high-profile cases, such as that involving Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration has cited involvement in pro-Palestinian activism as a rationale for deportation.
But colleges say most students affected by visa revocations played no role in those protests. Many are being singled out over minor infractions such as traffic violations that occurred long ago, and in some cases the reason is unclear, colleges say.

 


Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained

Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained
Updated 17 min 44 sec ago
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Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained

Russia sees progress in Ukraine peace talks but US relations strained
  • President Trump hints abandoning peace effort “if one of the two parties makes it very difficult”
  • Kremlin spokesman cites moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure as progress

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Friday that some progress had already been made in talks about a possible peace settlement to end the war in Ukraine but that contacts were rather complicated with the United States.
“Contacts are quite complicated, because, naturally, the topic is not an easy one,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
“Russia is committed to resolving this conflict, ensuring its own interests, and is open to dialogue. We continue to do this.”
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he wanted to achieve a peace deal quickly, but could not be involved in the search for a settlement indefinitely “if one of the two parties makes it very difficult.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking earlier in Paris after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders, said the sides had just days to show progress or Washington would abandon its efforts.

Asked if the United States could withdraw from the search for a peace settlement in Ukraine, Peskov said that was a question for Washington.
“We believe that some progress can already be noted,” Peskov said, citing a temporary moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure, though he said Ukraine had not adhered to it.
“Therefore, certain developments have already been achieved, but, of course, there are still many complex discussions ahead.”
Peskov, when asked if the energy moratorium was over, said that it had already been a month but that no orders from the president had been received to change Russia’s position.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and a representative of Russian hawks, expressed approval for the US remarks on the X social media platform.
“American officials have said that if there is no progress on the Ukrainian case, the United States will wash its hands of it. Wisely,” Medvedev wrote in English. “And the EU should do the same. Then Russia will figure it out faster.”


10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order
Updated 32 min 39 sec ago
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10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

10,000 pages of records about Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 assassination are released, on Trump’s order

WASHINGTON: About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, including handwritten notes by the gunman, who said the Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.
Many of the files had been made public previously, while others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities. Their release continued the disclosure of historical investigation documents ordered by President Donald Trump.
Kennedy was fatally shot on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.
The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.
“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope, referring to Kennedy’s older brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The return address was from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.
The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website.
The release comes a month after unredacted files related to the assassination of President Kennedy were disclosed. Those documents gave curious readers more details about Cold War-era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Robert Kennedy, commended the release.
“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” the health secretary said in a statement.
Documents include interviews with assassin’s acquaintances
The files surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person” others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.
According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. The sanitation worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.
“Well, I don’t agree. I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said there have always been conspiracies surrounding Robert Kennedy’s assassination. He believes the rollout of documents Friday would be similar to the JFK documents released earlier this year.
He cautioned that a review needs to be done carefully and slowly, “just in case there is a hint in there or there is an anecdote” that could shed more light on the assassination.
“I hope there’s more information,” Sabato said. “I’m doubtful that there is, just as I said when the JFK documents were released.”
Some redactions remained in the documents posted online Friday, including names and dates of birth. Last month, the Trump administration came under criticism over unredacted personal information, including Social Security numbers, during the release of records surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he has also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for more public scrutiny of the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.
Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King, who were killed within two months of each other.
Lawyers for Kennedy’s killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society, and in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.
RFK still stands as a hero to American liberals
Kennedy remains an icon for liberals, who see him as a champion for human rights who also was committed to fighting poverty and racial and economic injustice. They often regard his assassination as the last in a series of major tragedies that put the US and its politics on a darker, more conservative path.
He was a sometimes divisive figure during his lifetime. Some critics thought he came late to opposing the Vietnam War, and he launched his campaign for president in 1968 only after the Democratic primary in New Hampshire exposed President Johnson’s political weakness.
Kennedy’s older brother appointed him US attorney general, and he remained a close aide to him until JFK’s assassination in Dallas. In 1964, he won a US Senate seat from New York and was seen as the heir to the family’s political legacy.


Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont

Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont
Updated 46 min 18 sec ago
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Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont

Judge says detained Tufts student must be transferred from Louisiana to Vermont

A Tufts University student from Turkiye being held in Louisiana must be returned to New England by May 1 to determine whether she was illegally detained by immigration officials for co-writing an op-ed piece in the student newspaper, a federal judge ruled Friday.
US District Judge William Sessions in Burlington, Vermont, said he would hear Rumeysa Ozturk’s request to be released from detention. Her lawyers had requested that she be released immediately, or at least brought back to Vermont.
“The Court concludes that this case will continue in this court with Ms. Ozturk physically present for the remainder of the proceedings,” the judge wrote. “Ms. Ozturk has presented viable and serious habeas claims which warrant urgent review on the merits. The Court plans to move expeditiously to a bail hearing and final disposition of the habeas petition, as Ms. Ozturk’s claims require no less.”
Immigration officials surrounded the 30-year-old doctoral student as she walked along a street in a Boston suburb March 25 and drove her to New Hampshire and Vermont before putting her on a plane to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana. An immigration judge denied her request for bond Wednesday, citing “danger and flight risk” as the rationale.
Ozturk is among several people with ties to American universities whose visas were revoked or have been stopped from entering the US after they were accused of attending demonstrations or publicly expressing support for Palestinians. A Louisiana immigration judge has ruled that the US can deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil based on the federal government’s argument that he poses a national security risk.
A lawyer for the Justice Department said her case should be dismissed, saying the immigration court has jurisdiction.
Ozturk’s lawyers first filed a petition on her behalf in Massachusetts. Initially, they didn’t know where she was. They said they were unable to speak to her until more than 24 hours after she was detained. Ozturk herself said she unsuccessfully made multiple requests to speak to a lawyer.
Ozturk was one of four students who wrote an op-ed in the campus newspaper, The Tufts Daily, last year criticizing the university’s response to student activists demanding that Tufts “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide,” disclose its investments and divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Ozturk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said last month, without providing evidence, that investigations found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group.


China, Cambodia sign major canal deal

China, Cambodia sign major canal deal
Updated 18 April 2025
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China, Cambodia sign major canal deal

China, Cambodia sign major canal deal
  • The canal project, which was previously estimated to cost $1.7 billion — nearly 4 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product — and stretching 180 km, is now valued at $1.16 billion with a length of 151.6 km, the Cambodian government said in a

BEIJING:  China and Cambodia have agreed to build safe and stable supply chains and strengthen cooperation in transportation infrastructure, they said in a joint statement released by China’s Foreign Ministry on Friday.
The two countries also signed a deal to construct a major canal, which Cambodia hopes will transform its economic fortunes.
The agreements came after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s three-nation tour of Southeast Asia, which included stops in Vietnam and Malaysia.
The trip was part of Beijing’s effort to consolidate economic and trading ties with close neighbors.
“China supports Cambodia in building the Funan Techo Integrated Water Conservancy Project in accordance with the principles of feasibility and sustainability,” the joint statement said.
The canal project, which was previously estimated to cost $1.7 billion — nearly 4 percent of the country’s annual gross domestic product — and stretching 180 km, is now valued at $1.16 billion with a length of 151.6 km, the Cambodian government said in a separate statement.
The statement showed that it will be financed through a public-private partnership, with Cambodian investors holding a 51 percent stake and Chinese investors holding 49 percent.
China also commended Cambodia’s efforts in cracking down on illegal online gambling and telecom fraud in the joint statement, with the two countries agreeing to strengthen law enforcement cooperation further.
Before Xi’s visit, the Cambodian government said it had deported to China several “Chinese criminals,” including people from Taiwan, in a move that angered Taipei and was praised by Beijing.
The two countries also agreed to establish a ministerial dialogue between their foreign and defense ministers to facilitate coordination on major strategic issues.