Four Pakistani soldiers killed in roadside blast

June 08, 2019Author - Editor2

Four soldiers were killed and another four were wounded by a roadside bomb blast in a tribal area of northwestern Pakistan on Friday, in the latest attack in recent weeks in the restive North Waziristan region, officials said.

Security officials said the device was planted on a road in Khar Qamar, an area where security forces had recently conducted a search operation following a previous roadside bomb attack.
The Pakistani Taliban, which is separate from the Afghan Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Mohammad Khurasani, a spokesman for the movement, many of whose members are based across the border in Afghanistan.
Pakistani forces have conducted a series of operations against militant groups including the Pakistani Taliban in North Waziristan over recent years, although officials now say the area has largely been pacified.
Problems have continued, however, and security officials said at least 10 soldiers have been killed and 35 wounded over the past month in the Khar Qamar area, which has also seen growing tensions with local ethnic Pashtun activists from the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM).
There was no indication of any direct link between Friday’s incident and recent clashes between security forces and PTM activists, in which at least 13 local tribesman have been killed and some 30 wounded.
The military regards the PTM with deep suspicion, accusing it of being funded by foreign intelligence agencies, including those of India and Afghanistan.
Leaders of the group deny receiving any foreign funding and say the PTM is a non-violent grassroots movement dedicated only to defending the civil rights of ethnic minority Pashtuns in Pakistan.

Topics: PAKISTAN TALIBAN

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Philippines rejects call for UN rights council probe

Updated 08 June 2019

AFP

June 08, 201906:31

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The president has overseen a narcotics crackdown in which police have killed more than 5,300 suspected drug dealers and users
Rights groups say the actual number of dead is at least three times higher

MANILA: The Philippines on Saturday rejected a call for an independent United Nations probe into Manila’s alleged human rights violations, describing it as interference in the affairs of the Asian nation.
UN rights experts asked the UN Human Rights Council on Friday to look into the “staggering number of unlawful deaths and police killings in the context of the so-called war on drugs, as well as killings of human rights defenders.”
President Rodrigo Duterte has overseen a narcotics crackdown in which police have killed more than 5,300 suspected drug dealers and users since he was elected three years ago.
Rights groups say the actual number of dead is at least three times higher.
“The latest call by 11 special rapporteurs of the United Nations for an international probe of the Philippines not only is intellectually challenged but an outrageous interference on Philippine sovereignty,” Duterte spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
He accused the UN experts of “peddling a biased and absolutely false recital of facts, adulterated with malicious imputations against the constituted authorities.”
Panelo also said: “Those who have spoken against the campaign on illegal drugs and human rights record of this president have been overwhelmingly rejected by the Filipino electorate.”
Last month’s midterm polls, held halfway into Duterte’s six-year term, saw his allies take control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
The 11 UN experts, who are independent and do not speak for the United Nations, include the special rapporteur on summary or extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard.
Callamard earned Duterte’s ire when she called for a stop to the drug war killings in 2016.
Duterte’s drug war is his signature policy initiative and he defends it fiercely, especially from international critics and institutions which he says do not care about the Philippines.
Critics have alleged the crackdown amounts to a war on the poor that feeds an undercurrent of impunity and lawlessness in the country.