Browsing: International – Pakistan
Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar discussed regional developments in a telephone call today with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. According to Associated Press of Pakistan, Dar expressed his concern about the evolving regional situation, emphasizing that dialogue and diplomacy remain the only viable way forward. Source link
Pakistani firefighters yesterday retrieved the bodies of up to 25 people from the debris of a shopping mall fire in Karachi, taking the death toll to around 50. The port city’s largest fire in more than a decade broke out late on Saturday and quickly spread through the sprawling Gul Plaza shopping complex, famous for its 1,200 family-owned stores selling wedding clothes, toys, crockery and other goods. “We have found 20 to 25 dead bodies, or you call them remains,” deputy commissioner Javed Nabi Khoso told reporters. He said the remains had been taken to a hospital for DNA matching. Due to the difficulties in identification, he said it was hard to give a precise update on the death toll, which stood at 29 on Tuesday. A small crowd paying tribute to the victims lit candles near the site, with some holding images of those presumed killed. Firefighters had been battling the inferno inside the mall until Tuesday. By the time it was brought under control, Gul Plaza was reduced to a pile of ash and debris. A total of 84 people had been registered missing,according to a state-run rescue service. Police have said most of the missing are feared dead, meaning the toll could rise still further. “It is a ghastly scenario,” said shopkeeper Rehmat Khan after seeing inside what was left of the plaza. He said around 18 to 20 people had been in the shop, including six staff, when the fire erupted in the mall. All of them were missing, he said. Source link
Firefighters search for more than 60 missingRescue efforts hampered by unstable structure and debriAnger rising over response speed, government orders inquiry Pakistani firefighters began pulling bodies from the smouldering remains of a sprawling Karachi shopping mall on Monday where more than 60 people were still missing after a massive fire that killed at least 21.The city’s biggest fire in over a decade started late on Saturday at Gul Plaza, which houses 1,200 shops in a multi-storey complex spread across an area larger than a football field. The blaze in Karachi’s historic centre raged for more than 24 hours before it was mostly extinguished. Rescue workers use heavy machinery to remove rubble from the Gul Plaza Shopping Mall in Karachi. – Reuters Videos showed flames ripping through the building as firefighters laboured through the night to put out the blaze. On Monday, they began cooling the structure and clearing twisted metal and debris strewn across the street, along with fallen air-conditioning units and shop signboards.Most of the building had crumbled by Monday afternoon; cranes demolished the remaining structure amid fears it might collapse.Qasir Khan said his wife, daughter-in-law and her mother had gone to the mall on Saturday evening and were among those still missing. Emergency personnel remove human remains from…
Firefighters douse a fire that broke out at a shopping mall in Karachi Sunday. – AFP Firefighters in Pakistan’s largest city were fighting to extinguish a massive blaze Sunday that has killed six people and reduced parts of a shopping mall to rubble in Karachi’s historic downtown.Videos showed flames rising from the building as firefighters laboured through the night to stop the fire from spreading in the dense business district. Hundreds of people had gathered around the building, including distraught store owners whose businesses had turned to ash.The fire erupted on Saturday night, with rescue services receiving a call at 10:38 p.m. (1738 GMT) reporting that ground floor shops at Gul Plaza were ablaze.”When we arrived, the fire from the ground floor had spread to the upper floors, and almost the entire building was already engulfed in flames,” Rescue 1122 spokesperson Hassanul Haseeb Khan told Reuters.Police surgeon Dr Summaiya Syed said six bodies had been brought to Karachi’s Civil Hospital and 11 people who had been injured, adding that police were “invoking mass disaster protocols”.Images of the mall’s interior revealed the charred remains of stores and a bright orange glow as flames continued to rise throughout the building.Local media reported that parts of the building had started to collapse and rescue officials feared the whole structure could come down. Related Story Source link
Pakistani Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar and his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi, discussed regional developments in a phone call .During the call, the two sides agreed to continue consultations on issues of common concern. Source link
After three months, some Pakistani university students who were stuck in Afghanistan due to deadly clashes between the neighbouring countries were “permitted to go back home”, Afghan border police said yesterday. “The students from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (northwest Pakistan) who were stuck on this side of the border, only they were permitted to cross and go to their homes,” said Abdullah Farooqi, Afghan border police spokesman. The border has “not reopened” for other people, he said.The land border has been shut since October 12, leaving many people with no affordable option of making it home. “I am happy with the steps the Afghan government has taken to open the road for us, so that my friends and I will be able to return to our homes” during the winter break, Anees Afridi, a Pakistani medical student in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, told AFP. However, worries remain for the hundreds of students about returning to Afghanistan after the break ends. “If the road is still closed from that side (Pakistan), we will be forced to return to Afghanistan for our studies by air.” Flights are prohibitively expensive for most, and smuggling routes also come at great risk. Anees hopes that by the time they return for their studies “the road will be open on both sides through talks between the two governments.” Source link
A JF-17 Thunder fighter jet of the Pakistan Air Force takes off from Mushaf base in Sargodha (file). The talks between Pakistan and Indonesia revolved around…
Shamshad Akhtar, the first and only woman to lead Pakistan’s central bank and a two-time caretaker finance minister, died at 71, the finance ministry said Saturday.She was serving as chairperson of the Pakistan Stock Exchange at the time of her death, giving her a rare role spanning Pakistan’s monetary policy, fiscal management and capital markets.Akhtar was governor of the State Bank of Pakistan from 2006-09 and later led the finance ministry in caretaker governments ahead of the 2018 and 2024 general elections.Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb described Akhtar as a principled and dignified voice in Pakistan’s economic history, praising her integrity, professionalism and long public service.”She served the country with honesty and dedication in some of the most senior economic roles,” he said in a statement, offering condolences to her family, friends and colleagues.Local media reported that she died of cardiac arrest.Widely regarded as one of Pakistan’s most internationally experienced economic policymakers, Akhtar also held senior positions, including as vice-president at the World Bank and executive secretary of the UN ESCAP, and previously worked at the Asian Development Bank.Born in Hyderabad, she was educated in Karachi and Islamabad and held degrees from the University of the Punjab, Quaid-e-Azam University, the University of Sussex and the UK’s Paisley College of Technology. Related Story Source link
A police personnel stands guard on the occasion of Christmas at All Saints’ Church in Peshawar. – AFP After passing multiple checkpoints under the watchful eyes of snipers stationed overhead, hundreds of Christians gathered for a Christmas mass in northwest Pakistan 12 years after suicide bombers killed dozens of worshippers.The impact of metal shards remain etched on a wall next to a memorial bearing the names of those killed at All Saints Church in Peshawar, in the violence-wracked province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.”Even today, when I recall that day 12 years ago, my soul trembles,” Natasha Zulfiqar, a 30-year-old housewife who was wounded in the attack along with her parents, told AFP Thursday. Natasha Zulfiqar shows the scars on her…
Pakistan said yesterday that it had detected “abrupt variations” of water flows on a river crucial to its farmers, accusing neighbouring India of releasing water without warning in defiance of a major treaty that New Delhi suspended this year. India in April announced it was suspending the Indus Water Treaty in the lead up to armed conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours and following a deadly militant attack in India-administered Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan, which denied involvement. Pakistan has said any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water into the country would be considered an “act of war”.Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar told foreign diplomats yesterday that Pakistan’s water treaty commissioner had written a letter to his Indian counterpart over “unusual, abrupt variations” observed in the flow of the Chenab river from December 7-15, similar to changes detected in April and May. “These variations in water flows are of extreme concern for Pakistan, as they point to unilateral release of water by India,” he said, according to a ministry statement.India’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to request for comment.India suspended the treaty following a deadly attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22 that killed 26 people.New Delhi blamed Islamabad for backing the attack – which Islamabad denies – and said it was suspending the water treaty in response. – AFP Source link