Pakistan, Wars | featured news

Taliban leaders in Pakistan are pressing their soldiers in Afghanistan to step up attacks but minimize civilian casualties, a message that is dividing fighters from the leadership and may encourage some to quit the insurgency, a top Pentagon official said.

Pakistan on Wednesday released several Afghan Taliban captives, a gesture meant to nudge along on-again, off-again reconciliation talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said.

The second highest al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan was killed in a weekend airstrike in the country's volatile east near the border with Pakistan, NATO-led forces said on Tuesday.

Who wants to be a millionaire? In Pakistan, all you have to do is give the United States information leading to the arrest or conviction of Hafiz Saeed - an Islamist leader whose whereabouts are usually not a mystery.

A secret U.S. military report says that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control over Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country, The Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.

It seems as if violence is everywhere, but it's really on the run. Yes, thousands of people have died in bloody unrest from Africa to Pakistan, while terrorists plot bombings and kidnappings. Wars drag on in Iraq and Afghanistan. In peaceful Norway, a man massacred 69 youths in July. In Mexico, headless bodies turn up, victims of drug cartels. This month eight people died in a shooting in a California hair salon.

Pakistan would not tolerate any incursion on its territory by U.S. forces targeting militant groups, the country's interior minister said on Thursday, calling for Washington to provide the intelligence Islamabad needs to take them out itself.

American officials have blamed the bold attack on the U.S. Embassy on a Pakistan-based group allied with the Taliban.

Military officials in Pakistan announced the arrest of three men on Monday they said were senior Al Qaeda operatives who had been planning attacks on Western targets.

The number two leader of al Qaeda, Atiyah abd al-Rahman, was killed on August 22 in Pakistan, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday.