Taliban execute Pakistani policemen on video

 The Taliban released a video Monday showing fighters executing 16 Pakistani tribal policemen in a hail of gunfire after they were captured in a cross-border raid from Afghanistan in June.

The video shows the policemen lined up on a hillside with their hands tied behind their backs, standing in front of armed Taliban fighters wearing scarves to hide their faces. Both the policemen and the insurgents are wearing shalwar kameez, the baggy shirt and pants common in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of the insurgents accused the men of executing six children from Pakistan's Swat Valley by firing squad.

"They are the enemies of the religion of Allah," the man said of the police officers.

He and several other fighters then opened fire on the policemen, who crumpled to the ground. Several of them were still moaning, and one fighter walked down the line shooting the policemen in the head.

The video was posted on the LiveLeak video sharing website and included a note saying the policemen were captured when the Taliban staged a cross-border raid from Afghanistan on June 1 in Pakistan's northwest Dir district. The video was first reported on by The Long War Journal website.

Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas confirmed the contents of the video and said the Taliban fighters who executed the policemen came from the Swat Valley, an area that used to be controlled by the militant group. The Pakistani military launched a large offensive in Swat in 2009, but many of the fighters slipped across the border into Afghanistan.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters crossed into Upper Dir on June 1 from Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province. They killed at least 30 members of the security forces over three days of fighting before being forced back across the border by the military, Abbas said.

The Pakistani military has accused Afghan and NATO forces of not doing enough to target Taliban sanctuaries in Kunar, where the U.S. withdrew most of its forces over the last year.

Afghanistan and the U.S. have level similar accusations against Pakistan, saying it must do more to target sanctuaries on its side of the border filled with militants who regularly launch attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The Afghan government has also accused Pakistan of firing hundreds of rockets into Kunar over the past few months and killing at least 40 people — an allegation denied by Pakistan.

Afghanistan most dangerous place for women

 Burqa-clad Afghan women show identification cards as they wait to cast their votes at a polling centre in Kandahar in 2009

Afghanistan has been named as the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman. 

The study by the Thomson Reuters Foundation concluded that high levels of violence, poor health care and poverty came together in Afghanistan to provide the worst conditions for women.
The survey asked 213 gender experts from five continents to rank countries by risk, including cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking.
Afghanistan came out worst, despite 10 years of Western intervention.
The Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan followed in second and third positions.
India, the world's largest democracy, rated the fourth most dangerous location, largely due to high levels of female infanticide and sex trafficking.

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Pakistan bombings death toll reaches 39

A Pakistani man who was injured in a bomb blast in Nowshera lies in a hospital's bed waiting to be treated in Peshawar on Sunday. (Mohammad Zubair/ Associated Press)

TWO explosions went off minutes apart in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar yesterday, killing 39 people and injuring nearly 100 in one of the deadliest attacks since the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden last month, officials said.

The blasts, one of which was caused by a suicide bomber, occurred just after midnight in an area that is home to political offices and army housing.
The attack took place as CIA director Leon Panetta and Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Islamabad, 150km to the east, to speak separately with senior Pakistani officials about intelligence sharing and efforts to reconcile with the Taliban. The first explosion was relatively small and drew police and rescue workers to the site, said Dost Mohammed, a senior local police official. A large explosion rocked the area a few minutes later, causing the fatalities and injuring 98 people, 18 critically, said Rahim Jan, a senior doctor at a local hospital.

The second blast was caused by a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle packed with 10kg of explosives, said Ejaz Khan, a senior police official.
The source of the first explosion was unknown.
Pakistan's Taliban denied responsibility for the bombing despite an earlier pledge to carry out attacks in retaliation for the covert US Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden in an army town outside Islamabad on May 2.
The attack took place across the street from the offices of the top political agent to Khyber, part of Pakistan's volatile tribal region, and only about 100m from army housing units. Peshawar borders the tribal region and has been repeatedly hit by bombings over the past few years.
The attack followed a second day of meetings between Mr Panetta, the CIA chief and senior Pakistani officials.
The talks were slated to focus on the size and scope of US intelligence activities in the wake of the raid that killed bin Laden, said a Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

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