Blaze News - Pakistan

Two police personnel, including a sub-inspector and a head constable, were martyred when armed assailants opened fire on them in the Badami Bagh area on Thursday evening. The victims were identified as Sub-Inspector Adeel and Head Constable Asad, both deployed at Lorry Adda police station. According to police, the incident took place within the jurisdiction of Badami Bagh police station. Armed assailants opened fire on the two officials before fleeing the scene, police said. Both sustained critical bullet wounds and succumbed to their injuries. Read: Lahore attack: Cops killed in the line of duty Police identified the alleged central suspect as Rehan Butt, while efforts were under way to establish the identities of his accomplices. Reportedly, his brother Faizan Butt had been killed in an encounter a few days back. DIG Operations Faisal Kamran reached the scene along with a heavy police contingent and supervised the initial investigation. The area was cordoned off, and evide...

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) candidate Chaudhry Mohsin Aziz has challenged the election results in Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s (AJK) LA-17 Haveli-Kahuta constituency, alleging tampering in Form-24 and seeking a recount of votes. The third phase, covering Bagh and Haveli, followed polling in the Mirpur and Muzaffarabad divisions and is expected to influence the balance of power in the AJK Legislative Assembly. The Election Commission of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJKEC) admitted his application for hearing and summoned the parties for a hearing at 10am on Thursday in Muzaffarabad. The application was filed before the chief election commissioner through Aziz’s lawyers, Raja Sajjad Advocate and Chaudhry Ghulam Nabi Advocate. Aziz has also challenged Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari to agree to a recount, saying he would quit politics if he failed to win the constituency by a substantial margin after the recount. READ: Political tensions s...

Political tensions in Azad Jammu and Kashmir's (AJK) LA-17 Haveli constituency on Wednesday escalated after several vehicles parked along a roadside in the village of Hoter were vandalised, with allegations also surfacing that passports and cash belonging to some visitors were taken during the incident. The AJK general elections are being held in phases across the territory. Polling in the first phase, covering Mirpur Division, has already been completed, followed by the second phase in Muzaffarabad Division and the refugee constituencies. Local sources alleged that workers affiliated with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and an independent candidate attacked people gathered outside the residence of Zahid Hashmi, a senior Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader and president of the International Kashmir Peace Forum Europe (IKPF), in his native village. During the alleged attack, several vehicles parked on the roadside were damaged with their windows smashed, according t...

Lawyer Jibran Nasir on Tuesday alleged serious negligence in the investigation into the murder of waffle chain owner Mir Raza, questioning the handling of key evidence and demanded a criminal inquiry against three police officers. Raza, 25, was allegedly kidnapped from PECHS before his body was found in bushes near a wedding hall in Gulistan-e-Johar. Police had suspected that he had been tortured before being shot. The case had initially been surrounded by uncertainty over whether he had been murdered or had died by suicide. However, the findings of the second post-mortem had strengthened his family’s longstanding claim that he had been killed. Speaking at a press conference tonight, Nasir said reports from the University of Karachi indicated Raza was administered a local anaesthetic and that the body was 20 to 22 hours old. Nasir alleged that the victim had remained in someone’s captivity for around 12 hours. He further said that Mir Raza’s...

A group of bipartisan United States Congress members on Tuesday sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging him to take up the detention of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf founder and former prime minister Imran Khan with Pakistan. Imran has been imprisoned since August 2023, currently serving a sentence at Adiala Jail in a £190 million corruption case. He also faces pending trials under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) related to the protests of May 9, 2023. His party has regularly raised concerns about his health and well-being in detention. In a post on X today, the PTI's US account posted the letter from the lawmakers to Rubio. "We are concerned about former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and his wife Bushra Imran Khan's conditions in detention at the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, and throughout their entire time in custody," the letter said.  It said that, as per a December 2025 communication by the United Nations special rapporteur...

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Sohail Afridi on Monday announced that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s entire political leadership, alongside its allies such as the opposition coalition Tehreek Tahaffuz-e-Ayeen Pakistan (TTAP), was on board for a long march to Islamabad on September 27, warning that the public's anger over ongoing injustices may become unmanageable. Speaking on a private news programme, 'Capital Talk', he said that the "entire political leadership of PTI, both federal and provincial, is on board for the protest, including our allies, Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e-Ayeen-e-Pakistan. We have collectively decided on the date of 27". Afridi stated that the protest was a last resort after democratic avenues to secure PTI founder Imran Khan's release were exhausted. He lamented that Imran was being treated like a "kidnapped individual" rather than a political prisoner, held in "solitary confinement and isolation for the past seven ...