ISLAMABAD: Renowned Atomic Scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan Friday said Pakistan’s nuclear assets are completely secure and that ‘even a group of a thousand terrorists together won’t be able to gain access to its atomic technology.’

Talking to journalists here, Dr. Abudul Qadeer Khan rubbished the impression that Pakistan’s atomic programme is not safe.

“The atomic technology is not a rudimentary thing and it is impossible for anyone, including terrorists, to gain access to it,” Dr. Qadeer ruled out in an unequivocal tone.

He said no one can steal the nuclear technology because its assembling and use requires highest level of sophisticated expertise. “Even a thousand terrorists together can’t gain access to it,” he added.

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan said cooperation in the field of nuclear science can be enhanced with trustworthy friends like China.

Pakistan has 4 million Ahmadis and is the only state to have officially declared the Ahmadis to be non-Muslims, their freedom of religion has been curtailed by a series of ordinances, acts and constitutional amendments. In 1974 Pakistan’s parliament adopted a law declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. The country’s constitution was amended to define a Muslim “as a person who believes in the finality of the Prophet Muhammad”. In 1984 General Zia-ul-Haq, the then military ruler of Pakistan, issued Ordinance XX. The ordinance, which was supposed to prevent “anti-Islamic activities,” forbids Ahmadis to call themselves Muslim or to “pose as Muslims.” This means that they are not allowed to profess the Islamic creed publicly or call their places of worship mosques. Ahmadis in Pakistan are also barred by law from worshipping in non-Ahmadi mosques or public prayer rooms, performing the Muslim call to prayer, using the traditional Islamic greeting in public, publicly quoting from the Quran, preaching in public, seeking converts, or producing, publishing, and disseminating their religious materials. These acts are punishable by imprisonment of up to three years.
As a result of the cultural implications of the laws and constitutional amendments regarding Ahmadis in Pakistan, persecution and hate-related incidents are constantly reported from different parts of the country. Ahmadis have been the target of many attacks led by various religious groups. All religious seminaries and madrasahs in Pakistan, belonging to different sects of Islam, have prescribed essential reading materials specifically targeted at refuting Ahmadiyya beliefs.
In a recent survey in Pakistan, pupils in private schools of Pakistan expressed their opinions on religious tolerance in the country. The figures assembled in the study reflect that even in the educated classes of Pakistan, Ahmadis are considered to be the least deserving minority in terms of equal opportunities and civil rights. In the same study, the teachers in these elite schools showed an even lower amount of tolerance towards Ahmadis than their pupils.

Gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed two Pakistani mosques belonging to a minority sect in Lahore, bringing carnage to Friday prayers and killing around 80 people.

Squads of militants burst into prayer halls firing guns, throwing grenades and taking hostages in the deadliest attack on the city of eight million, which has been increasingly hit by Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked violence.

Both mosques belonged to the Ahmadi community, which Pakistan has declared non-Muslim. Although the estimated minority of two million has been attacked by Sunni extremists before, the magnitude of Friday’s assault was unprecedented.

The United States condemned what it called “brutal violence against innocent people”.

“We also condemn the targeting and violence against any religious group, in this case the Ahmadi community,” State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters in Washington.

Pakistan’s leading rights group said the community had received threats for more than a year and officials blamed the attack on Islamist militants, who have killed more than 3,370 people in bombings over the last three years.

“Terrorists have attacked mosques. They are firing and using grenades. They have taken people inside the mosque hostage,” district civil defence official Muzhar Ahmed told AFP from the scene in the bustling Garhi Shahu neighbourhood.

The attacks sparked more than two hours of gun battles with police and commandos, as bursts of heavy gunfire rocked the neighbourhoods and rescue services raced through the streets to tend to the victims.

“The prayer leader was delivering a sermon inside the hall when I suddenly heard distant gunshots,” Bilal Ahmed, a worshipper, told AFP after fleeing with his life from the mosque in Model Town.

“Then the firing became louder and closer and people started running here, there and everywhere to save themselves. Gunmen had entered the prayer hall and they were moving towards upper floors.

“The attackers were youths with beards who were not covering their faces. The floor was full of blood and broken glass,” Ahmed said.

As the gun battles ended in both locations, officials spoke of scenes of carnage — particularly in Garhi, Shahu where dozens of bodies were found.

“Around 80 people have been killed,” Sajjad Bhutta, the top city administrative official in Lahore, told reporters.

Doctor Rizwan Nasir, head of the rescue services in Lahore, said 108 people were wounded as police continued to search for any remaining attackers.

Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have orchestrated a three-year bombing campaign in Pakistan to avenge military operations and the government’s alliance with the United States over the war in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Friday’s attacks were the worst in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed 101 people on January 1 at a volleyball game in Bannu, which abuts the tribal belt along the Afghan border that Washington calls an Al-Qaeda headquarters.

Nine attacks have killed around 265 people in Lahore since March 2009, a historical city, playground for the elite and home to many top brass in Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence establishment.

The precise number of attackers at Garhi Shahu was not immediately clear, but police said there were at least three in Model Town.

“They came into the mosque from the back and started firing. They were armed with hand grenades and suicide vests and other weapons,” Rana Ayaz, a senior local police official, told AFP.

Officials said one of the attackers blew himself up and two were arrested — one of them a teenager. The other was seriously wounded.

Founded by Ghulam Ahmad, who was born in 1838, the Ahmadi sect has a number of unique views including that Ahmad himself was a prophet and that Jesus died aged 120 in Srinagar, capital of Indian-ruled Kashmir.

The 2009 US State Department report on human rights says that 11 Ahmadis were killed due to their faith during the year.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said it had warned of threats against the Ahmadi community centre in Lahore and demanded “foolproof security and protection” from the government.

It expressed concern over “the increasing sectarian dimension” of militancy in Pakistan, which it called “a big security threat to the entire society”.

Religious violence in Pakistan, mostly between majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shiites, has killed more than 4,000 people in the past decades.

To read more click…
80 dead as gunmen attack Pakistani mosques

Investigators in Pakistan and the US continue to pursue possible links between Faisal Shahzad, the New York bomb suspect, and fighters in Pakistan. The Pakistani Ambassador to Washington said that no such connection has yet been established. Pakistani’s and Pakistani Americans in Jackson Heights, New York, have been thrown on the defensive by recent events.

Pakistan on Tuesday made several arrests in connection with the failed Times Square car bomb attack in New York, security sources said.

World

“We have picked up a few family members” related to Faisal Shahzad, the chief suspect in the attempted attack, a security official in Karachi said. A friend of Shahzad was also arrested.

Shahzad, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American, was arrested late on Monday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York after being removed from a plane as it was about take off for Dubai, American officials said.

Another intelligence official in Pakistan said Shahzad received militant training in northwest Pakistan near the garrison town of Kohat. The area around Kohat is a stronghold of Tariq Afridi, the main Pakistani Taliban commander in the region.

Pakistan, which could come under renewed U.S. pressure to crack down harder on militants after the Times Square incident, vowed on Tuesday to help the United States bring Shahzad to justice

Shahzad will appear in Manhattan federal court later on Tuesday to face charges “for allegedly driving a car bomb into Times Square on the evening of May 1,” according to a statement by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, FBI agent George Venizelos and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.

“We will cooperate with the United States in identifying this individual and bringing him to justice,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told Reuters.

U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson met Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Malik and talked about the issue, Pakistani government officials and the U.S. Embassy said.

“We have an ongoing cooperation with the United States on anti-terrorism efforts. If required by the United States, we will extend full cooperation to them in this regard,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said.

‘HE BELONGS TO PABBI’

Malik said Faisal’s family came from northwestern Pakistan which is mainly inhabited by Pashtuns and where Islamic militants are active.

“He belongs to Pabbi,” he said, referring to a small town near the main northwestern city of Peshawar about an hour’s drive from Islamabad.

“He has Pakistani identification documents. We are making further checks.”

He added there had been no arrests in Pakistan so far.

A source familiar with the investigation in the United States said Faisal was of Kashmiri descent.

Pakistan is a key ally of the United States and has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda operatives and handed over many of them to the United States after it signed up to the U.S.-led war on terrorism after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

The Taliban in Pakistan said on Sunday it planted the bomb in Times Square to avenge the killing in April of al Qaeda’s two top leaders in Iraq as well as U.S. interference in Muslim countries.

Some officials voiced scepticism about the claim. But former CIA analyst Bruce Riedel, who last year oversaw an Obama administration strategy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan, cautioned against dismissing a possible role by the Taliban.

Source:Reuters

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, April 19 (Xinhua) — At least 18 people were killed as a second blast hit a crowded market in the Pakistani northwestern city of Peshawar on Monday, said local sources.

One police officer was also killed in the attack, hospital sources told Xinhua.

The blast was targeted on a protest rally against the electricity loadshedding in downtown Peshawar. It was followed by firing, eyewitnesses said.

Related:

Blast rocks school in Pakistan’ s Peshawar, 1 child killed

Seven people have been killed and more than 20 wounded in a car bomb attack in north-western Pakistan.
A senior police official in the city of Kohat said a suicide bomber had driven a vehicle into the rear wall of a police station.
He suggested the incident was a response to a military operation that is under way in the area.
On Saturday two suicide bombers killed more than 40 people and wounded at least 60 at a displaced people’s camp.
That attack occurred about 40km (25 miles) away from the site of Sunday’s attack.
On Friday a suicide attack at a hospital in the south-west Pakistani city of Quetta killed at least 10 people and injured 35 more.
The attacker detonated a bomb in a waiting room at the Civil Hospital where people had gathered following the fatal shooting of a Shia businessman.
To Read more click…
Car bomb in north-west Pakistan city of Kohat

9 people were killed and the situation panicked people in all the wards when a suicide bomber blew up himself in a hospital Quetta city in southwestern Pakistan. According to the police this appeared to be linked with the death of Shiite bank manager, whose body was brought into the hospital just before the blast.

Four policemen including a television camera man were killed in the blast and 30 others were injured. “It appears to be sectarian violence,” provincial police chief Qazi Abdul Wahid told AFP. “We have found legs and head from the blast site. We have also found metal pellets, usually stuffed in suicide vests, from the blast site,” police officer Mohammad Iqbal said.

Suicide bomber blew up himself in the emergency ward, all the patients who were in emergency ward were shifted to other sections. According to the officials bomber used almost 11 to 18 pounds of explosives.

To read more click below…
Bomb Blast in Pakistan Hospital

Iraq officials say at least five separate bombings tore through Baghdad Tuesday, killing at least 35 people and wounding 140 others.

Security officials blame the string of attacks on al-Qaida in Iraq, raising fears the country’s political uncertainty is opening the way for insurgent violence.
Source:VOA.com

The attacks Tuesday targeted mostly apartment buildings in predominantly Shi’ite neighborhoods. The scene was chaotic as emergency crews rushed to the blast sites and passers-by raced to rescue victims buried in the rubble.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Officials had feared security could deteriorate amid continuing disputes concerning the March 7 parliamentary poll.

The results gave former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi’s secular coalition two more seats than the Shi’ite-led coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

With no clear winner, it could take months for the rival coalitions to form a new government.