Daily News Channel
Pakistani authorities on Thursday deployed paramilitary troops to a district, only 96 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital, where Taliban militants appeared to be consolidating control after this week’s land-grab. Militants locked up courthouses and seized court documents in the district of Buner, said police Superintendent Arsala Khan.
Taliban militants, who implemented Islamic law in Pakistan’s violence-plagued Swat Valley last week, have now taken control of a neighboring district.
Five days of gunbattles between the Indian army and separatist militants in Indian-administered Kashmir have left at least 25 dead — eight Indian army troopers, including one officer, and 17 militants, the Indian military said Tuesday.
Somali President Sharif Sheikh Hassan said Saturday he will give in to a rebel demand that he impose Islamic law, or sharia, in an effort to halt fighting between Somali forces and Islamic insurgents. However, Hassan told a news conference he won’t agree to a strict interpretation of the law, which forbids girls from attending school, requires veils for women and beards for men, and bans music and television. The president, speaking at his palace in the capital, Mogadishu, said local elders and religious leaders, acting as liaisons with the militants, brought him a message saying the rebels wanted a truce in the two-year-old fighting.
In a desperate move to deal with an intractable radical insurgency, the Pakistan government says it will impose a form of Islamic law in the area of Swat Valley in the northwestern corner of the country. As a result, Islamabad’s faltering military campaign there has been put on hold, and the militants have agreed to a tentative ceasefire.
Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan announced a 10-day cease-fire on Sunday in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, a volatile region in North West Frontier Province that is largely controlled by the Taliban.