SSP, two army officers killed in Chilas firing incident

CHILAS: Three people, including a Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Diamer and two army officers, were killed on Tuesday as their convoy came under attack in Gilgit-Baltistan’s Chilas area.

According to DawnNews, unknown gunmen opened fire on a government convoy in Chilas, killing SSP Diamer Muhammad Hilal and two army officers Colonel Ghulam Mustafa and Captain Ashfaq Aziz on the spot.

Turkey’s ‘Ergenekon’ trial comes to an end, with 17 life sentences handed out

SILIVRI: A Turkish court on Monday sentenced a former army chief to life in prison in a high-profile trial of 275 people accused of plotting against the Islamic-rooted government, a ruling that sparked angry protests in the streets.

Police fired tear gas and water cannon at thousands of protesters outside the court near Istanbul after the verdicts were delivered in the divisive case, which resulted in lengthy prison sentences for the majority of the accused, including top brass, journalists and opposition lawmakers.

Attacks on Baghdad mosques kill nine

BAGHDAD: A Shia and a Sunni mosque in Baghdad were targeted in bombings that killed at least nine people, Iraqi officials said.

Police officials said a suicide bomber set off his explosives on Shia worshippers as they were leaving a mosque in the city's suburb of Hussainya late on Tuesday.

Seven people died and 11 were wounded in that attack.

Air raids kill 11 Syrian kids

BEIRUT: Seven children in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo and another four in Homs in the center were among 17 civilians killed in air raids on Tuesday, a watchdog said.

The deaths in Homs come as troops pressed an offensive against remaining rebel areas there, while in Aleppo province, the raid comes exactly a year into the rebel takeover of the targeted town of Anadan.

Twin blasts near courthouse in Libya's Benghazi: sources

Two powerful explosions went off near the courthouse in Libya's second city of Benghazi on Sunday night, leaving 10 people injured and causing damage, witnesses and a security source said.

The blasts came a day after 1,000 inmates escaped during a prison riot in the restive eastern city, birthplace of the 2011 armed uprising that ousted and killed dictator Moamer Kadhafi.On Friday night, hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Benghazi to condemn the assassination in the city earlier the same day of Abdessalem al-Mesmari, an anti-Islamist lawyer who campaigned for a civil state.

Imran says fall from forklift saved him from dying in a blast

KARACHI: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan has confirmed speculations doing the rounds in the country in the run-up to the May 11 elections that there was a plot to assassinate him and that the fall off a forklift at a Lahore rally on May 7 that nearly killed him “had quite possibly saved my life”.

In an article carried by Britain’s MailOnline on Sunday, Mr Khan wrote he had been told he was number one on the terrorist hit-list. There are perhaps 25 militant groups which call themselves ‘Taliban’ and any one of them could have been hired by his political opponents.

Malaysia court quashes Hindu kids' conversion to Islam

KUALA LUMPUR :A Malaysian court on Thursday ruled against the 2009 conversion of three Hindu children to Islam without their mother's knowledge, a verdict welcomed by non-Muslim groups.

A high court in the northern city of Ipoh declared the conversion of Ms Indira Gandhi's children, now aged five, 15 and 16, by their father to be unconstitutional, said Indira's lawyer K. Shanmuga. The judge ruled that the father failed to take the mother and children to Islamic authorities for their consent to the conversion, in a rare verdict in the multiracial but Muslim-majority nation, Mr Shanmuga said.

Egyptian army threatens to shoot violent protesters

CAIRO: Egypt's army threatened on Thursday to shoot those who use violence in a stark warning before what both sides expect will be a bloody street showdown between Islamists and opponents of deposed President Mohamed Mursi.

An army official said the military had set Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood an ultimatum, giving it until Saturday to sign up to a plan for political reconciliation which it has so far spurned.

Egypt blast kills one, wounds 28

CAIRO: A blast Wednesday at a police station in a Nile Delta city killed one person and wounded 28, a medic said, in the latest incidence of violence sweeping Egypt since president Mohamed Morsi's ouster.

Mohamed Sultan, deputy head of the emergency services, told AFP an explosive device went off very early in the morning outside a police station in the city of Mansura, in Dahqaliya province.

Bashar al-Assad's militias 'cleansing' Homs of Sunni Muslims

The "Shabiha", a loyalist militia drawn largely from the Syrian president's Alawite sect, is systematically looting and then destroying the homes of any Sunnis who have fled the province, a key battleground in the country's civil war.

"They pushed out the rebel fighters and now they are trying to push out all the Sunnis," said Bilal, a 23-year-old from the Sunni village of Talkalakh in Homs province. "They took our houses, threatened us, destroyed our villages."

Six of a family killed in Okara road mishap

At least six members of a family, including women and minor children were killed in a road accident here in Okara late on Sunday night.

According to details, the accident took place at Okara bypass where a speedy private car carrying six people of a family got out of control due to slipperiness caused by rain and rammed into a trailer parked by roadside.

As a result of accident the six occupants of the car including Khalid Hussain, his wife Kalsoom, mother, sister and two minor children died on the spot.

Six of a family killed in Okara road mishap

At least six members of a family, including women and minor children were killed in a road accident here in Okara late on Sunday night.

According to details, the accident took place at Okara bypass where a speedy private car carrying six people of a family got out of control due to slipperiness caused by rain and rammed into a trailer parked by roadside.

As a result of accident the six occupants of the car including Khalid Hussain, his wife Kalsoom, mother, sister and two minor children died on the spot.

Bangladesh leader sentenced to death for war crimes

DHAKA: A Bangladesh court Wednesday sentenced a senior leader of the country’s largest Islamic party to death for crimes committed during the 1971 war.

Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, 65, was found guilty of five charges, including abduction and murder, and was sentenced to death by the much-criticised International Crimes Tribunal.

“In three out of five charges he was given the death sentence,” the country’s junior attorney general and prosecutor MK Rahman said.

Pro-Assad militia kills Syrian reconciliation team in Homs village

At least six mediators have been killed by pro-government militiamen in the Syrian province of Homs, reports say.

The men were reportedly trying to broker talks between Sunni Muslims and members of the minority Alawite sect in the area when they were shot dead.

Yet another prisoner escapes from Karachi court

KARACHI: Yet another prisoner escaped from Karachi’s city court on Tuesday, Express News reported.

This is the third incident of suspects escaping from the court premises in July.

According to initial details, the prisoner was brought to the court for a hearing.

Earlier on July 13, two terror suspects who were alleged members of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) escaped from the same court. They were believed to be involved in bomb attacks on Muttahida Quami Movement’s (MQM) offices during the general elections. After a court hearing was adjourned, the prisoners managed to flee easily while the CID police officials were taking them back to the jail.

Four Shia Hazaras among seven gunned down in Quetta

QUETTA: At least seven people, including four members of the Shia Hazara community, were shot dead Monday in separate incidents of violence in Quetta, the capital of militancy-hit Balochistan province.

Gunmen opened fire at a vehicle in Quetta, killing four men belonging to the ethnic Shia Hazara community. In a separate incident later at night, gunmen on a motorcycle shot dead three and injured another person in the city’s Khudaidad Chowk area.

Morsi loyalists clash with security forces as US envoy visits

CAIRO: Hundreds of Islamists loyal to deposed president Mohamed Morsi clashed Monday with security forces as they rallied for his return, after a US envoy urged Egypt's army-backed leaders to end violence.

The demonstrators cut off the October 6 bridge across the Nile in the heart of Cairo, before the security forces fired tear gas to drive them back, an AFP correspondent reported.

The pro-Morsi protesters, who had turned out in their thousands after the Ramadan iftar meal to demand his return, responded by hurling rocks at the security forces, who again dispersed them by firing tear gas.

9.7 million to leave city during Idul Fitri

More than 9.7 million people are expected to leave Jakarta for their respective hometowns to celebrate the upcoming Idul Fitri holiday, which falls on Aug. 8 and 9, an official says.

Jakarta Transportation Agency head Udar Pristono said during a leadership meeting at City Hall on Monday that the number was 8.6 percent higher than the 9 million people who left the capital during last year’s Idul Fitri exodus.

“We predict that there will be 7.2 million vehicles, comprising 5.8 million four-wheel vehicles and 1.4 million motorcycles, leaving the city,” he said.

Egypt interim leader offers Brotherhood roles

The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist Nour Party will be offered ministerial positions in the transitional government, officials have said, hours after the appointment of a new prime minister.

Hazem el-Beblawi, a liberal economist and former finance minister, was named the new prime minister, the presidential spokesman, Ahmed al-Muslimani, said.

Liberal opposition chief and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei was named vice president for foreign relations, Muslimani said on Tuesday.

OGRA scam: Tauqir Sadiq brought back to Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Former Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority chairman Tauqir Sadiq, allegedly involved in a Rs82 billion scam, has been shifted to Pakistan from United Arab Emirates.

Sadiq was brought back to Pakistan by a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) investigator Waqas Khan through a private airliner, which landed at the Islamabad’s Benazir International airport here on Wednesday morning.