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After a dastardly terrorist attack that killed six including five Chinese nationals in Shangla on Tuesday, the military pledged to ensure accountability of all the elements involved in aiding terrorism, directly or indirectly, with the help of Pakistan’s long-standing ally China, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said on Tuesday. As the country witnessed rise in terrorism, another militant attack sent shock waves across the country when an explosives-laden vehicle crashed into a car carrying five Chinese engineers in Shangla’s Besham city while they rode to Dasu camp, Kohistan from Islamabad, killing all passengers including a woman and Pakistani national driver.  “Certain foreign elements are complicit in aiding and abetting terrorism in Pakistan, driven by their vested interests. Despite the veneer of innocence, these elements are being continuously exposed as sponsors of terror,” the military’s media wing said in a statement condemning the attack. It said that the recent incidents of terrorism in Pakistan, notably in Gwadar, Turbat, and Besham, are dastardly acts aimed at destabilising the internal security situation. While the first two attempts were successfully thwarted by the armed forces, the latest incident in Besham led to the loss of six innocent civilians including five Chinese nationals. The whole nation stands in solidarity with our Chinese brothers and unequivocally condemned this cowardly act, the ISPR added. “Strategic projects and sensitive sites vital for Pakistan’s economic progress and the well-being of its people are being targeted as a conscious effort to retard our progress and sow discord between Pakistan and its strategic allies and partners, most notably China,” it said. The military’s media wing further stated that such heinous acts of violence against innocent civilians, foreigners and the armed forces will not deter the resolve of the Pakistani people, its security forces and our partners to root out the menace of terrorism from the country. “Pakistan, as the frontline state against terror, remains perhaps the only nation directly confronting the international terrorist enterprise with absolute steadfastness and full resolve of the state. “With the unwavering support of the resilient nation and our iron-clad ally China, we will ensure that all those involved in aiding terrorism, directly or indirectly, are held accountable and find their due comeuppance. Together we will prevail over adversity and evil,” it added. The attack Confirming attack on Chinese nationals, Malakand deputy inspector general of police (DIG) said that a Pakistani citizen who was driving the targeted car was injured in the attack and was shifted to a local hospital. Later, the driver succumbed to his wounds during treatment. After the attack, a heavy contingent of security personnel arrived at the incident’s site and cordoned off the area. Security forces have launched a search operation in the area for the suspects. Taking notice of the incident, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited the Chinese embassy in Islamabad and extended condolences to the Chinese ambassador over the unfortunate incident. Earlier, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi also visited the embasy informed the Chinese ambassador about the details of the attack and deaths of Chinese engineers. Reacting to the incident, President Asif Ali Zardari, Gilgit-Baltistan Chief Minister Haji Gulber Khan, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Punjab, KP and Sindh chief ministers and others strongly condemned the attack, saying that such efforts to harm Pakistan’s ties with China will never get successful. Today’s attack follows a militant attack on Pakistan Navy base, PNS Siddique in Turbat, which was successfully foiled by the security forces, as the country witnesses a spike in such attacks, resulting in deaths of several civilians and law enforcement officials. A fierce terrorist attack on a security forces’ check post in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan, KP on March 16, resulted in martyrdom of seven Pakistan Army soldiers — including a lieutenant colonel and captain. The military has said that the continuous use of Afghan soil is behind the “growing terrorism in Pakistan”, saying that the rise in terror attacks is a result of supply of modern weapons into the country “with the help of Afghan Taliban”. Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1172553-army-vows-action-against-perpetrators-of-shangla-attack-as-chinese-engineers-among-6-killed

At least five people have been killed when a bus travelling from Berlin to Switzerland veered off a highway in eastern Germany and ended up on its side, police say. “Numerous” others were injured in the incident on the A9 motorway near Leipzig about 9:45am (08:45 GMT) on Wednesday, police in the state of Saxony said on the social media platform X. The A9 is an important north-south motorway linking the German capital to Munich. It was closed in both directions after the crash. It was not immediately clear why the bus, which was operated by Flixbus and was en route to Zurich, went off the road. Rescue helicopters and ambulances were at the scene. Flixbus said 53 passengers and two drivers were on board, the German Press Agency dpa reported. The company said it was working closely with local authorities and rescue services and would do everything to clear up the cause of the accident quickly. At the Deaconess Hospital in Leipzig, the emergency department was alerted, and operating theatres and diagnostic rooms were being prepared and kept on standby, a spokesperson said. Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/27/germany-flixbus-crash-at-least-five-killed-as-coach-veers-off-highway

UN expert who found Israel committed genocide says she has been threatenedFrancesca Albanese, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the West Bank and Gaza, says she had received threats throughout her mandate.Albanese presented a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday in which she said there were reasonable grounds to believe genocide had been committed against Palestinians in Gaza.“I do receive threats. Nothing that so far I considered needing extra precautions. Pressure? Yes. And it doesn’t change either my commitment or the results of my work,” she said, according to the Reuters news service.Click here to share on social media

The four men suspected of carrying out a brutal attack at a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 139 people have appeared in court on terror charges, as the Kremlin defended its security services criticized for failing to prevent the massacre. Three of the suspects were bent double as they were marched into the Moscow courtroom late on Sunday night, while the fourth was in a wheelchair and appeared unresponsive. The suspects, who are from the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan but worked in Russia on temporary or expired visas, were named by Moscow City Court as Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Mukhammadsobir Faizov. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison. They are accused of storming Crocus City Hall in a Moscow suburb on Friday, shooting civilians at point blank before setting the building on fire, causing the roof to collapse while concert-goers were still inside. ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre and released graphic footage showing the incident – but Moscow has insinuated, without evidence, that the perpetrators planned to flee to Ukraine. Kyiv has vehemently denied involvement and called the Kremlin’s claims “absurd.” At a meeting with other government officials on Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin conceded the attack had been carried out by “radical Islamists,” but still tried to pin ultimate responsibility on Ukraine. “We know that the crime was committed by radical Islamists, whose ideology the Islamic world itself has been fighting for centuries,” Putin said, but added that the attack “is a link in a series of attempts of those who have been fighting Russia since 2014 with the hands of the neo-Nazi Kyiv regime.” The first suspect charged, Mirzoyev, had a black eye, bruises over his face and a plastic bag wrapped around his neck. Mirzoyev, 32, had a temporary resident permit for three months in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but it had expired, Russian state media RIA Novosti reported. Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, a suspect in the shooting attack at the Crocus City Hall concert venue, sits behind a glass wall of an enclosure for defendants at the Basmanny district court in Moscow, March 24, 2024. Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters Rachabalizoda, born in 1994, told the court through an interpreter that he has Russian registration documents but could not remember where they are. He appeared in court with a swollen eye and a bandaged ear. The third defendant, Fariduni, born in 1998, was employed at a factory in the industrial city of Podolsk and registered in Krasnogorsk, both near Moscow. The three men pleaded guilty to the terrorism charges, Russian media reported. It was unclear what the fourth man, Faizov, born in 2004, pled. He was pictured lying limp in a wheelchair inside a glass cage. One video appears to show Rachabalizoda being held on the ground while having part of his ear cut off and stuffed in his mouth by a camouflage-wearing interpreter. Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russian state propaganda network RT, posted a video of Rachabalizoda appearing in court with a heavily bandaged ear, which she wrote made her “feel nothing but pleasure.” CNN asked the Kremlin about the “visible signs of violence” committed against the suspects, but spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to comment. The four have been remanded into pre-trial detention until May 2022, the court said. Later Monday, Russia’s Investigative Committee asked the court to detain three other men – two brothers and their father – in connection with the attack, Russian state media TASS reported. Mukhammadsobir Faizov, a suspect in the shooting attack, appeared unresponsive in court, on Sunday. Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters On Monday, three days after the attack, rescuers were still searching among the ruins of the collapsed concert hall and trying to clear rubble. Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations said more than 300 “specialists” were working at the site. The attack, the deadliest on Russian soil in almost two decades, was met with outrage and disbelief in Russia, prompting calls for the harshest of punishments to be meted out. While the concert hall roof was still burning, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and shared a video taken by the men as they stormed the building, where thousands of Russians had arrived to watch the rock group Picnic. CNN has geolocated the 90-second video to the concert hall, where bodies and blood can be seen on the floor as fire rages above. The video also shows one of the attackers slitting the throat of a man lying on his back, and ends with the four attackers walking away inside the building with smoke rising in the distance. Despite ISIS appearing to provide evidence that its fighters had carried out the attack, Putin and other senior officials have been keen to associate Ukraine with the terror attack. In a national following the attack – more than 19 hours after it began – Putin on Saturday claimed that a “window” had been prepared for the attackers to escape to Ukraine. He did not provide evidence. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also said: “Now we know in which country these bloody bastards planned to hide from persecution – Ukraine.” Ukraine has vehemently denied any involvement and called the allegations a “planned provocation by the Kremlin to further fuel anti-Ukrainian hysteria in Russia society” and further mobilize Russian citizens to participate in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Firefighters respond to the burning Crocus City Hall on March 22. Maxim Shemetov/Reuters Despite relations between Washington and Moscow being at historic lows, the United States warned Russia that ISIS militants were planning to stage an attack in the country. The US embassy in Moscow said earlier this month it was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow,” including concerts. US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienna Watson said the US had shared this information with Russian authorities under the “duty to warn” policy. The US also warned American citizens to avoid places like theaters and concert halls. But in a speech Tuesday – just days before the attack – Putin dismissed the American warnings as “provocative,”

Islamabad, Pakistan – Five Chinese nationals and a Pakistani driver have been killed after a suicide attacker rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into their convoy near Besham city in northwest Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The incident happened on Tuesday when the convoy was on its way from Islamabad to Dasu, the site of a key hydroelectric dam being constructed by a Chinese company, about 270km (167 miles) from the capital. “Our rescue team has successfully retrieved bodies of four people whereas recovery of two more people is still ongoing,” Bilal Faizi, spokesman for Rescue 1122 group in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told Al Jazeera. Rescue officials said the vehicle carrying the Chinese nationals fell in a gorge after the blast and at least two bodies were badly burnt, making their identification difficult. No armed group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack. The Chinese embassy in Islamabad or the Chinese foreign ministry in Beijing have not commented on the incident yet. China is a close ally of Pakistan and has invested heavily in various projects in the South Asian country. But the safety of Chinese nationals working on those projects is often threatened by several armed groups in the region. In 2021, the bombing of a bus in Dasu killed 13 people, nine of them Chinese. Dasu is about 80km (49 miles) further northwest from Besham where Tuesday’s suicide attack happened – the third such incident in a week. On Monday night, separatist fighters attacked a naval airbase in Turbat area in the southwestern province of Balochistan, killing at least one paramilitary soldier. Officials said all five of the assailants were also killed in retaliatory fire. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which has been behind several attacks on Pakistani and Chinese interests in the region and elsewhere, claimed responsibility for the Turbat attack. Last week, another BLA attack at Gwadar, a port city in Balochistan, killed two soldiers and eight of the group’s fighters. Gwadar is the centrepiece of the $62bn dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, Pakistan’s most ambitious infrastructure and investment project in recent years. In a statement, President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack on Chinese nationals. “Anti-Pakistani elements will never succeed in harming the Pakistan-China friendship,” he said. Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said “enemies” had targeted the citizens of Pakistan’s “extremely trusted friendly country”. “This was not an attack on Chinese citizens but also on Pakistan,” he said. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who assumed power for the second time earlier this month, is expected to visit China next month. Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/26/israels-war-on-gaza-live-world-welcomes-un-ceasefire-resolution

US sanctions facilitators for Houthis, Hezbollah, Quds ForceThe US treasury department has issued sanctions targeting finance and trade facilitators for these groups, which include six entities, one individual and two tankers.“This action, the sixth round of sanctions targeting the network of Iran-based, IRGC-QF-backed Houthi financial facilitator Sa’id al-Jamal since December 2023, represents yet another step in a concerted campaign to disrupt IRGC-QF finances and its support to terrorist proxies such as the Houthis,” the treasury said in a statement.Click here to share on social media Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/26/israels-war-on-gaza-live-world-welcomes-un-ceasefire-resolution

Pakistan Day celebrations Saturday began with fresh vows to work towards the country’s progress and stability. The iconic military parade remains the day’s most significant feature where the armed forces’ contingents and other security forces conducted a march past, while fighter planes presented aerobatic maneuvers. Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud is the guest of honour in today’s event while the contingents of China and Azerbaijan will also feature in the parade. President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and all the services chiefs are present at the occasion. Addressing the occasion, President Asif Ali Zardari said March 23 holds national importance, as Muslims of the subcontinent demanded a separate nation for themselves. During his speech, he welcomed Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Defence Prince Khalid bin Salman Khalid Bin Aziz, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, members of Parliament, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Sahir Shamshad Mirza, and Parade commander. “Today, we pay homage to leaders, martyrs and ghazis who sacrificed their lives for independence,” said the president, adding that the Pakistani nation, from its independence till today, has gone through ups and downs. “Despite the difficulties, we developed in different areas including defence, agriculture, education, health, and technology in provinces,” said the head of state. The president said that Pakistan is a strong country in terms of defence and the country’s armed forces are always ready for the nation. Speaking about the issues being faced by Pakistan, Zardari said the country is facing economic, social and political challenges, as well as increasing population, climate change, education and poverty. He added that Pakistan went through a successful electoral phase to elect a democratic government, adding that it was now everyone’s responsibility to solve these issues together. “I believe that just like we faced the challenges in the past, we can still rid Pakistan of these challenges. A special investment facilitation council has been set up for the country’s economy. Through this plan, we will be developing foreign investment, agriculture, livestock, minerals, mining, information technology and energy sector,” he said. “I request all political parties to keep aside their political benefits to find a solution to the problems and work together for the development of Pakistan,” said President Zardari. He added: “In our region, one of the main reasons for instability is the Indian Illegal Occupation of Jammu and Kashmir. The Kashmiri people have been demanding their right of self-determination for 76 years. We condemn the brutalities, human rights violation carried out by the Indian government against innocent and unarmed Kashmiri people and ask international to ensure the implementation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution on Kashmir. “I want to remind the Kashmiris once again that the people of Pakistan will always stand by them in their just struggle against trinity. “With regards to human catastrophes unfolding in Gaza, we appeal to the international community to take measures to ensure that the killing of innocent Palestinian people including children and women is immediately halted, a ceasefire is announced and a humanitarian corridor is opened at priority. Pakistan will continue to support the people of Palestine till the resolution of Palestine issued as per their aspirations of their people.” He said Pakistan wants relations with all its neighbours as it is a peace loving country and a responsible state. “However, we will not compromise on our sovereignty. Our nation and armed forces are always ready to respond to any aggression at all times. We will not tolerate any efforts by terrorists or any groups to destablise our country. Today’s parade is a reminder of our unity, strength and pride.” The president, on the occasion, thanked China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey and other countries for standing with Pakistan in hard times. Pakistan Day The day marks the adoption of the historic Lahore Resolution on this day in 1940 which provided a framework for the realisation of the goal of a separate homeland for Muslims of South Asia. The day dawned with a 31-gun salute in the federal capital and a 21-gun salute in provincial capitals. Special prayers were offered in mosques after Fajr prayers for the prosperity and solidarity of the country. The national flag is hoisted on major government buildings. Change of guard ceremonies Change of guard ceremonies were held at the mausoleums of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Karachi and Dr Allama Iqbal in Lahore. Air Vice Marshal Tariq Mahmood was the chief guest at the ceremony held at Iqbal’s mausoleum in Lahore where Pakistan Airforce troops took over guard duty from Chenab Rangers. President, PM messages In his message on Pakistan Day, President Asif Ali Zardari stressed upon the nation to participate in the nation-building process actively, embracing the values of hard work, integrity, and compassion. He honoured the commitment and sacrifices made by the Quaid-e-Azam and his companions. The president said the armed forces, civil administration, police and law enforcement agencies have, with unwavering commitment, ensured the safety, security, and sovereignty of our nation. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has asked the nation to renew its firm resolve to follow in the footsteps of the founding fathers to make Pakistan a trivet of peace, progress and stability. The premier said our forefathers made untiring efforts and rendered exemplary sacrifices for Pakistan as millions of Muslims left their homes in India and decided to migrate to Pakistan. The prime minister said we are completely cognizant of the serious challenges confronting Pakistan currently including inflation, unemployment, circular debt, fiscal and trade deficit, and above all the growing scourge of terrorism. He assured to stand committed to put Pakistan on the path to economic recovery and prosperity with a cogent policy reform framework. Source: https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/1171417-pakistan-day-2024-celebrations-begin-with-military-parade

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/3/23/isil-says-it-was-behind-moscow-concert-hall-attack-that-killed-at-least-60