Pakistan

LAHORE, Pakistan – Over 800 poor Christians in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore have been forced to live on the roads with no immediate hope of having a shelter of their own after local authorities demolished their homes located in a slum early Saturday morning, with the Christians claiming that they were given just a day’s notice to vacate the land.

Residents of Gaju Matta slum in Ittehad Colony, located along the Rohi Nullah, said they had been living on the land since 1998, when they were forced out of their previous dwelling in the Sabzazar area to make way for a housing society.

The Kachhi Abadi (slums) regulations state that no slum can be demolished without providing alternate housing to the dwellers. Any settlement of over 40 houses built before 2006 qualifies as a Kachhi Abadi, and the Gaju Matta slum fulfilled that criterion with over 150 houses. more >>

Pakistan is facing another natural disaster as almost a month of monsoon rains have killed more than 100 people in the southern region of the country and forced millions to flee their homes.

The southern and eastern provinces of the country are the hardest hit, with entire villages being destroyed.

Local rivers have swelled and water have flooded villages, forcing around 2.2 million people to flee. more >>

A U.S.-operated drone has killed al-Qaida’s second-in-command Atiyah Abd al-Rahman in Pakistan, giving a major blow to the terror network that relied heavily on the deceased leader for its global operations.

Unnamed U.S. and Pakistani officials revealed Saturday that al-Rahman, a 43-year-old Libyan operative, was killed in Machi Khel village in Pakistani’s North Waziristan region on Aug. 22, according to The Associated Press.

The death of al-Rahman, also known as Jamal al-Shitaywi, has been reported for the second time in less than a year. Last October, Pakistan officials told DPA news agency that al-Rahman had been killed in a drone attack in the same region in Pakistan. However, neither U.S. officials nor al-Qaida confirmed the alleged killing then. more >>

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Unidentified gunmen in Pakistan on Friday kidnapped the son of Salmaan Taseer, the liberal provincial governor assassinated by one of his bodyguards earlier this year in retaliation for Taseer's opposition to the country’s controversial blasphemy laws.

The abduction of Shahbaz Taseer in the eastern city of Lahore raised concerns that Islamic extremists were intent on targeting members of the Taseer family, some of whom have continued to speak out against intolerance in Pakistani society after the governor's slaying on Jan. 4.

After bodyguard Malik Mumtaz Qadri shot to death the elder Taseer outside an Islamabad restaurant, he told police he killed the Punjab provincial governor because of Taseer's stance against the country's blasphemy statute, which makes it a crime to insult the Muslim prophet Muhammad, the Quran, or Islam and can entail execution as punishment. Qadri, 26, is awaiting trial and Taseer elder son Shehryar Taseer is pursuing the case. more >>

A suicide bomber attacked worshipers inside a mosque as the main prayer ended in a tribal area near the city of Jamrud, Pakistan on Friday, killing more than 40 and injuring hundreds.

The explosion happened in the Khyber tribal area during Islam’s holiest month of Ramadan, when Muslims around the world submit themselves to a month of fasting and prayer.

It is believed that the death toll will rise as the situation becomes clearer in Jamrud. Jamrud is west of Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which lies close to the Afghan border. more >>

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – In another twist in the probe into the assassination of Pakistan’s first Christian minorities’ affairs minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, the joint investigation team formed by the government to trace his killers has claimed that family rivalry, and not the Taliban, had killed Shahbaz Bhatti, according to a media report.

Shahbaz Bhatti’s daylight murder in the federal capital Islamabad on March 2 earlier this year, is now being attributed to a property dispute between relatives. According to a report appearing in Pakistan's vernacular press, police investigators have concluded it was not a religiously-motivated murder despite the fact that the Punjabi Taliban had claimed responsibility for the assassination the very same day.

Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan called several media organizations to claim responsibility for Bhatti’s murder because "he was advocating a review of the controversial blasphemy laws." The Pakistani government, meanwhile, had called on other countries not to link the Christian minister’s assassination with blasphemy. Pamphlets found from the murder site had also claimed that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Punjab, an affiliate of the al-Qaida, had executed Bhatti to punish him for pursuing a review of the blasphemy laws to stop its misuse against the minorities. more >>