Suicide bomber, gunmen attack security post in northwest Pakistan, killing 15 security personnel

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By Associated Press | Posted by TOE A  suicide bomber backed by gunmen attacked  a security checkpoint in northwest Pakistan, killing 15 members of the security forces, the military said Friday. In a statement, the military said troops repelled the overnight assault in Tank, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and killed 12 militants. The military blamed the attack on the  Pakistani Taliban , known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The group is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers. Pakistan has long accused Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing sanctuary to TTP militants, an allegation Kabul denies. There was no immediate comment from the group. According to the military, the attackers attempted to storm the checkpoint but were pushed back by security forces before ramming an explosives-laden vehicle into the perimeter wall, triggering a powerful blast that severely damaged the checkpoint. The military said those ...
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Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan settle border dispute that sparked deadly clashes

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 Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two ex-Soviet Central Asian states, said on Friday that they had resolved a decades-old border dispute that had sparked clashes between different ethnic groups that had killed over a hundred people.

Top security officials from both countries signed an agreement setting down the state borders over more than 970 km (600 miles) after resolving disputes over certain sections. The document must now be signed by the countries’ presidents.

Two days of skirmishes in border regions killed more than 100 people in September 2022 and prompted the evacuation of about 140,000 residents. Similar clashes in April 2021 killed about 20 people and injured more than 200.

“The border demarcation between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is taking place after two quite bloody conflicts and this complicates the problem,” Temur Umarov, a Central Asian expert at the Berlin Carnegie centre, told Reuters.

“This is a sensitive political issue. If the documents agreed on are published, they will become of considerable public interest and groups in both countries could well oppose the newly-agreed borders.”

Border issues in Central Asia have persisted since the Soviet era, when authorities made demarcations that sought to reflect the ethnic make-up of specific regions.

But settlements in which other groups were predominant often found themselves on the wrong side of a border.

Both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan host Russian military bases and maintain close ties with Moscow.

Tajikistan, with a population of 10 million and Kyrgyzstan, with more than seven million, are among the poorest countries in a region subject to unrest.

A civil war in newly-independent Tajikistan in the 1990s, pitting Russian-backed government troops against Islamist and other groups, killed tens of thousands of people.

SOURCE: REUTERS AND AGENCIES



from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/rLfwdGy

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