Pakistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - The conditional prisoner release order announced by the Afghan government is against the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in Doha last month, a spokesman for the group said on Wednesday.

“It is properly explained in the peace accord that first 5,000 prisoners would be freed and then the Afghan dialogue would be initiated,” Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for the Taliban in Doha told Reuters by phone.

Islamabad, Mar 10 (PTI) Pakistan witnessed a sudden increase in coronavirus cases as the number of patients rose to 16, officials said on Tuesday.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza confirmed that nine new cases were identified in Karachi, capital of Sindh province.

ISLAMABAD, March 6 (Xinhua) -- At least 80 people were affected after inhaling poisonous gas leaked from a chemical factory in Port Qasim of Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi on Friday, police said.

The leakage happened in a factory of Engro Corporation due to breakage of a pipe in the factory, affecting the people working in the vicinity, Senior Superintendent Police of the area Muhammad Ali Raza said, adding that all people have been evacuated from the area.

Islamabad, Mar 6 (PTI) Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said Pakistan does not want any security role for India in Afghanistan as he accused New Delhi of playing the role of a "spoiler" in the war-torn country, according to a media report.

After months of negotiations, the US and Taliban signed a landmark peace deal in Qatari capital Doha on Saturday, effectively drawing curtains on the United States' 18-year war in Afghanistan since 2001.

ISLAMABAD, Mar 6 (APP): The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is considering downgrading India’s ranking with respect to religious freedom. The Commission is mulling whether to move down India a notch from “Tier II” to “Tier I” or “countries with particular concern” on account of religious freedom.

ISLAMABAD, Feb 29 (APP): Prime Minister Imran Khan Saturday said that the ongoing carnage of Muslims in New Delhi and state sponsored terrorism in India would lead to the radicalization of 200 million Indian Muslims just like those of Kashmir.

“In Delhi carnage of Muslims, state-sponsored terror through police & RSS gangs is going to lead to radicalisation of the 200 million Indian Muslims just as the Kashmiri youth has been radicalised through the oppression of Indian Occupation forces & deaths of almost 100,000 Kashmiris,” the prime minister remarked on Twitter.

29 Feb 2020; MEMO: Pakistan on Friday reopened its border with neighboring Iran, allowing hundreds of its stranded citizens to return to the country, officials and local media reported, Anadolu Agency reports.

“We have reopened the border to allow our citizens to enter [the country] in batches,” Liaquat Shahwani, a spokesperson for the government of southwestern Balochistan province that borders Iran, told Anadolu Agency.

ISLAMABAD, Feb 26 (APP): Prime Minister Imran Khan Wednesday stressed that implementation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions remained the only way for peaceful solution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.

He was talking to Gen Mohamed Ahmed Zaki Mohamed, Egyptian Commander-in-Chief and Minister for Defence and Military Production, who called on him here.

ISLAMABAD, Feb 26 (APP): Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday reiterated that today in India, they were witnessing the Nazi-inspired Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideology taking over India, a nuclear-armed state of over a billion people.

In a series of tweets on his twitter account, the prime minister said: “Whenever a racist ideology based on hatred takes over, it leads to bloodshed.”

The prime minister was alluding to the recent ongoing bloodbath, chaos and attacks unleashed by the RSS zealots against Muslims and other minorities in Delhi.

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) - A major women’s rights movement in Pakistan is facing a legal challenge over a march scheduled for next month over allegations that the organizers’ activities are “anti-state”.

The event, known as the Aurat March, using the Urdu word for ‘women’, has been held in multiple cities in Pakistan for the last two years to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8.

Organisers say they have faced a backlash from conservative elements in the country, including threats of murder and rape.