North Waziristan

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- An unusually large barrage of missiles fired by remotely piloted U.S. aircraft killed 16 people in the tribal area of North Waziristan on Thursday, a possible indication that the United States plans to escalate such attacks after Pakistan declined to step up its operations there. The attacks came in a week in which top U.S. military officials visited Islamabad and asked Pakistani authorities to do more to go after insurgent groups that are based in North Waziristan but are focused on killing...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen kidnapped the son of a former Pakistani prime minister Thursday at a campaign rally in southern Punjab province as violence continued to rise ahead of Saturday's national election , which some call the bloodiest in the country's history . Hours after his youngest son, Ali Haider Gilani, was kidnapped and two others killed in the attack, ex-premier Yousuf Raza Gilani urged supporters of their Pakistan People's...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Gunmen kidnapped the son of a former Pakistani prime minister Thursday at a campaign rally in southern Punjab province as violence continued to rise ahead of Saturday's national election , which some call the bloodiest in the country's history . Hours after his youngest son, Ali Haider Gilani, was kidnapped and two others killed in the attack, ex-premier Yousuf Raza Gilani urged supporters of their Pakistan People's...

The murder of nine polio vaccination workers during 48 hours in Pakistan has all the hallmarks of a Taliban operation: coordinated, ruthless and monstrous. The attacks have succeeded in shutting down an anti-polio campaign in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, and other areas. This could hardly come at a worse time in the global effort against the disease. Polio was one of the most feared diagnoses of the 20th century. The virus attacks the brain and spinal cord, swiftly destroying the cells that control muscles.

RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN -- Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made an unannounced trip here Thursday to urge Pakistan to expand its crackdown against the Taliban as well as to counter skepticism about the Obama administration's new war strategy for Afghanistan . Soon after the Pentagon chief landed, however, the Pakistani military declared it was not yet prepared to send more troops into the rebellious tribal area of North Waziristan, home...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At Oxford Public Middle School, an enthusiastic group of students recite their lesson for the day, which involves learning how to count. Only here there are no desks, no chairs and even the teacher's chair doesn't have a cushion. Oxford Middle School is in North Waziristan, in the heart of Taliban country, and these fidgety youngsters — wearing baseball caps that sport their school logo — are learning to count in Urdu and Pashto. In this wartime landscape,...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan , June 29 -- The Pakistani military is at war with the Taliban, but the ambush that killed 16 soldiers in the tribal region of North Waziristan on Sunday was still somewhat unexpected. "There is no operation which was either planned or being conducted in North Waziristan," Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a Pakistani military spokesman, told reporters Monday. "This attack was completely unprovoked. " The Taliban assault on an army convoy passing through the...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 14 -- At least 11 people were killed early Friday, including six foreign fighters, in a suspected U.S. missile strike on Pakistan's troubled border region of North Waziristan, a security official and an eyewitness said. Also Friday, gunmen in the frontier city of Peshawar opened fire on a car carrying a Japanese journalist and his Pakistani assistant. Motoki Yotsukura of the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese daily, was wounded in the leg, police officer Mohammed Khan told the Associated...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, PAKISTAN -- A U.S. missile strike in Pakistan recently killed one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists, a man suspected in a deadly 1986 plane hijacking with a $5 million bounty on his head, three Pakistani intelligence officials said Friday. The death would be the latest victory for the CIA-led missile campaign against militant targets in the insurgent-riddled Pakistani tribal belt bordering Afghanistan , an effort that has recently escalated. A strike Thursday is...

LAHORE, Pakistan — A missile strike by unmanned U.S. Predator planes Thursday reportedly killed at least 25 suspected Islamist insurgents and tribal supporters in a village in Pakistan's remote North Waziristan region, Pakistani officials and tribal sources said. The attack in Datta Khel, whose victims may also have included a group of elders holding a nearby meeting, was one of the deadliest since U.S. intelligence services began sending cross-border drone aircraft to target suspected...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At Oxford Public Middle School, an enthusiastic group of students recite their lesson for the day, which involves learning how to count. Only here there are no desks, no chairs and even the teacher's chair doesn't have a cushion. Oxford Middle School is in North Waziristan, in the heart of Taliban country, and these fidgety youngsters — wearing baseball caps that sport their school logo — are learning to count in Urdu and Pashto. In this wartime landscape, where hundreds of...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — It's a well-known fact in Pakistan that Osama bin Laden died in 2006 and that the U.S. commando raid on his compound in May 2011 was merely a "drama" orchestrated by President Obama to help win reelection. Of course, if that were true, Obama might have waited until after the first presidential debate of the campaign season to fake the al-Qaeda leader's killing. But no matter. Pakistanis love a good conspiracy theory. Some national newspapers...

Just days before a congressional deadline , the Obama administration is deeply divided over whether to designate the Pakistan-based Haqqani network as a terrorist group, with some officials worried that doing so could complicate efforts to restart peace talks with the Taliban and undermine already-fraught relations with Pakistan. In early August, Congress gave Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton 30 days to determine whether the Haqqani group, considered the...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — At least 18 people were killed and more than 40 wounded Friday when a bomb detonated in a bus filled with government employees and other civilians, authorities said. The bomb was believed to have been detonated by remote control, police said. "The victims included mainly government civilian employees and civilians," said Shafiullah Khan, a senior police officer at the scene. He said at least 22 employees of the Peshawar Civil Secretariat and more than 30 other civilian passengers...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Ten suspected militants were killed Thursday in a pre-dawn drone strike on a compound in a tribal district in northwestern Pakistan, a local tribesman and security official said. In Thursday's attack, the second by a U.S. drone in 24 hours, two missiles struck a house in the Mirali area of North Waziristan, the officials said. Initial reports said eight militants, including five "foreigners," were killed and several wounded. The death toll was later increased to 10, according...

ISLAMABAD — Although Pakistan's leaders have complained bitterly about CIA drones targeting militants on their country's soil, they seem powerless to stop them. Now attorneys for drone strike victims want to know why the government has failed to act. Two cases filed last week raise an uncomfortable point for the Pakistani government: Despite three resolutions by Parliament calling for a halt to the drone attacks, they have not only continued but escalated. "This is...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — At least 18 people were killed and more than 40 wounded Friday when a bomb detonated in a bus filled with government employees and other civilians, authorities said. The bomb was believed to have been detonated by remote control, police said. "The victims included mainly government civilian employees and civilians," said Shafiullah Khan, a senior police officer at the scene. He said at least 22 employees of the Peshawar Civil Secretariat and more than 30 other civilian passengers were aboard the...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan— CIA drone missiles hit militant targets in Pakistan on Sunday for the first time in a month, as the United States ignored the Pakistani government's insistence that such attacks end as a condition for normalized relations between the two perpetually uneasy allies. The drone strikes, which have long infuriated the Pakistani public, killed four al-Qaeda-linked fighters in a girls' school they had taken over in the North Waziristan tribal area, security officials there said.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At the urging of the Afghan Taliban, four major Pakistani insurgent factions have joined the Afghan guerrilla group known as the Haqqani network in a council aimed at resolving infighting and ending militant violence against civilians in Pakistan. The council's formation was announced in a leaflet distributed in recent days in North Waziristan, a remote Pakistani tribal area that is the base of the Haqqani network, a cross-border group that NATO forces in next-door...