Pakistan Sentences Former Dictator To Death In Treason Case

In this April 15, 2013, file photo, Pakistan's former President and military ruler Pervez Musharraf addresses his party supporters at his house in Islamabad, Pakistan. A Pakistani court sentenced the country's former military ruler on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019, to death in a treason case relating to the imposition of a state of emergency by him in 2007 when he was in power. Musharraf who is apparently sick and receiving treatment in Dubai where he lives was not present in the courtroom when judges announced Tuesday's ruling. (B.K. Bangash, File)

BY MUNIR AHMED

ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Pakistani court on Tuesday sentenced the country’s former military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf to death in a treason case related to the state of emergency he imposed in 2007 while in power, officials said.

It’s the first time in Pakistan’s history that a former army chief and ruler of the country has been sentenced to death. Musharraf, who was sentenced in absentia, has been out of the country since 2016, when he was allowed to leave on bail to seek medical treatment abroad.

He has been living in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and is said to be very ill and unlikely to travel home to face the sentence. Pakistan and the UAE have no extradition treaty and Emirati authorities are unlikely to arrest Musharraf. If he were to return, however, Musharraf would have the right to challenge his conviction and sentence in court.

The ruling Tuesday by a three-judge panel was not unanimous and one of the judges had opposed the death sentence, according to Akhtar Shah, one of Musharraf’s lawyers. Shah said he would appeal the sentence.

“Musharraf today sent me a message, saying he is ready to come to Pakistan but his doctors are not allowing him to travel,” the lawyer told The Associated Press following the ruling. He added that Musharraf offered to give a statement to the court through a video link but the request was denied.

A senior Supreme Court lawyer, Hamid Ali Khan, hailed the verdict as long overdue. “For the first time in the history of Pakistan ... a military dictator has been punished by a court of law,” he said.

After the sentence was announced, Pakistan’s Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan told reporters that Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government would “review in detail” the verdict before commenting on it. Khan, who enjoys good ties with the country’s powerful military, is expected to return home from Geneva on Wednesday.

The military did not immediately react to the death sentence for Musharaf, a former army chief. Defense Minister Pervez Khattak said the ailing former dictator still has the right to appeal.

Mehrene Malik Adam, the secretary-general of Musharraf’s small opposition party All Pakistan Muslim League, denounced the trial. “Legal requirements were not met and our lawyers were not given the opportunity to present their case,” she said.

In an infamous purge in 2007, Musharraf imposed a state of emergency and placed several key judges under house arrest in the capital, Islamabad, and elsewhere in Pakistan. He came to power after ousting former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a 1999 bloodless coup.

Later, when he was back in office, Sharif first accused Musharraf of treason in 2013. The general was formally charged in 2014.

Musharraf was hospitalized again last week in Dubai but the state of his health or a specific reason for this hospitalization has not been announced. Earlier, in a video message he released two weeks ago, Musharraf said he was ready to record his statement about the treason case for the court but that he was unable to travel to Pakistan.

In the video, looking visibly unwell, Musharraf claimed the treason charges were baseless and said he served his country for 10 years.

“I have fought for my country,” he says in the video. “This is a case in which I have not been heard and I have been victimized.”

Sharif himself was ousted in 2017 and was later convicted of corruption. He left Pakistan on bail earlier this month to travel to London for medical treatment.

Sharif’s spokesman Ahsan Iqbal praised Tuesday’s ruling, saying Musharraf deserved the death sentence because he had ousted an elected government. “We welcome this court ruling,” Iqbal said, adding that the judges had done justice to a former dictator.

This story has been corrected to show that Musharraf released his video message two weeks ago, not last week, and that his lawyer’s family name is Shah, not Sheikh.

Key Events In Kashmir Since British Rule Ended In 1947

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

In this Aug. 26, 1947, file photo, a cart loaded with children and household goods belonging to a Muslim family fleeing from Hindu India moves along a road near Lahore, India. In 1947 Britain left the Indian subcontinent divided as predominantly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan. Massive migrations of Hindus and Muslims to their country of choice trigged violence, leaving more than million people dead. (AP Photo/Max Desfor, File)

Some Key Events In Kashmir:

— August 1947: With the end of British colonial rule, the Indian subcontinent is divided into predominantly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan. A mass migration follows, with Hindus and Muslims moving to their country of choice, and more than a million people are killed in communal violence.

— October 1947: India and Pakistan fight their first war over control of Muslim-majority Kashmir, a kingdom ruled by Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. The war ends in 1948 with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, leaving Kashmir divided between the nations, with the promise of a U.N.-sponsored referendum.

— August 1965: A second war erupts over Kashmir, and India and Pakistan agree to a U.N.-mandated cease-fire in September.

— December 1971: The third war between India and Pakistan is fought in East Pakistan, ending with the creation of an independent country, Bangladesh.

— May 1974: India detonates a nuclear device in the first confirmed nuclear test by a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

— December 1988: India and Pakistan sign an agreement that neither will attack each other’s nuclear installations or facilities; it takes effect in 1991.

— 1989: Armed resistance to Indian rule in Kashmir begins. India says Pakistan supports local fighters with weapons and training, which Pakistan denies, saying it only gives local Kashmiris “moral and diplomatic” support.

— May 1998: India detonates five nuclear devices and Pakistan responds by detonating six of its own. International sanctions are imposed against both.

— December 2001: India masses troops along its western frontier with Pakistan and the Kashmir boundary after blaming Pakistani insurgents for a deadly attack at the Indian Parliament. The standoff ends in October 2002 after international mediation.

— November 2008: Gunmen mount an audacious attack in India’s financial capital of Mumbai, killing 166 people. India blames a Pakistan-based militant group.

— September 2016: Suspected rebels sneak into an army base in Indian-controlled Kashmir and kill at least 18 soldiers. Indian forces later attack militant bases in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

— Feb. 14, 2019: A car bombing of a paramilitary convoy in Indian-controlled Kashmir kills 40 Indian soldiers. Militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, headquartered in Pakistan, claims responsibility. India blames Pakistan and promises a “crushing response.”

— Aug. 5, 2019: India’s central government changes part of the Indian Constitution and downgrades Jammu and Kashmir from one state to two territories. The changes eliminate Kashmir’s right to its own constitution, limit its decision-making power, and allow non-Kashmiri Indians to settle there.

Pakistani Girls Trafficked To China In New "Bride Market"

In this April 14, 2019 photo, Mahek Liaqat, who married a Chinese national, shows her marriage certificate in Gujranwala, Pakistan. Poor Pakistani Christian girls are being lured into marriages with Chinese men, whom they are told are Christian and wealthy only to end up trapped in China, married to men who are neither Christian nor well-to-do, and some are unable to return home. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)

BY KATHY GANNON, DAKE KANG

GUJRANWALA, PAKISTAN (AP) — Muqadas Ashraf was just 16 when her parents married her off to a Chinese man who had come to Pakistan looking for a bride. Less than five months later, Muqadas is back in her home country, pregnant and seeking a divorce from a husband she says was abusive.

She is one of hundreds of poor Christian girls who have been trafficked to China in a market for brides that has swiftly grown in Pakistan since late last year, activists say. Brokers are aggressively seeking out girls for Chinese men, sometimes even cruising outside churches to ask for potential brides. They are being helped by Christian clerics paid to target impoverished parents in their congregation with promises of wealth in exchange for their daughters.

Parents receive several thousand dollars and are told that their new sons-in-law are wealthy Christian converts. The grooms turn out to be neither, according to several brides, their parents, an activist, pastors and government officials, all of whom spoke to The Associated Press. Once in China, the girls — most often married against their will — can find themselves isolated in remote rural regions, vulnerable to abuse, unable to communicate and reliant on a translation app even for a glass of water.

“This is human smuggling,” said Ijaz Alam Augustine, the human rights and minorities minister in Pakistan’s Punjab province, in an interview with the AP. “Greed is really responsible for these marriages ... I have met with some of these girls and they are very poor.”

Augustine accused the Chinese government and its embassy in Pakistan of turning a blind eye to the practice by unquestioningly issuing visas and documents. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied that, saying China has zero tolerance for illegal transnational marriage agencies.

Human Rights Watch called on China and Pakistan to take action to end bride trafficking, warning in an April 26 statement of “increasing evidence that Pakistani women and girls are at risk of sexual slavery in China.”

On Monday, Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency arrested eight Chinese nationals and four Pakistanis in raids in Punjab province in connection with trafficking, Geo TV reported. It said the raids followed an undercover operation that included attending an arranged marriage.

The Chinese embassy said last month that China is cooperating with Pakistan to crack down on unlawful matchmaking centers, saying “both Chinese and Pakistani youths are victims of these illegal agents.”

The Associated Press interviewed more than a dozen Christian Pakistani brides and would-be brides who fled before exchanging vows. All had similar accounts of a process involving brokers and members of the clergy, including describing houses where they were taken to see potential husbands and spend their wedding nights in Islamabad, the country’s capital, and Lahore, the capital of Punjab province.

“It is all fraud and cheating. All the promises they make are fake,” said Muqadas.

___

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

In China, demand for foreign brides has mounted, a legacy of the one-child policy that skewed the country’s gender balance toward males. Brides initially came largely from Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. Now men are looking further afield, said Mimi Vu, director of advocacy at Pacific Links, which helps trafficked Vietnamese women.

“It’s purely supply and demand,” she said. “It used to be, ‘Is she light-skinned?’ Now it’s like, ‘Is she female?’”

Pakistan seems to have come onto marriage brokers’ radar late last year.

Saleem Iqbal, a Christian activist, said he first began to see significant numbers of marriage to Chinese men in October. Since then, an estimated 750 to 1,000 girls have been married off, he said.

Pakistan’s small Christian community, centered in Punjab province, makes a vulnerable target. Numbering some 2.5 million in the country’s overwhelmingly Muslim population of 200 million, Christians are among Pakistan’s most deeply impoverished. They also have little political or social support.

Among all faiths in Pakistan, parents often decide a daughter’s marriage partner. The deeply patriarchal society sees girls as less desirable than boys and as a burden because the bride’s family must pay a dowry and the cost of the wedding when they marry. A new bride is often mistreated by her husband and in-laws if her dowry is considered inadequate.

By contrast, potential Chinese grooms offer parents money and pay all wedding expenses.

Some of the grooms are from among the tens of thousands of Chinese in Pakistan working on infrastructure projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a project that has further boosted ties between the two countries in recent years. Other grooms search directly from China through networks. They present themselves as Christian converts, but pastors complicit in the deals don’t ask for any documentation.

They pay on average $3,500 to $5,000, including payments to parents, pastors and a broker, said Iqbal, who is also a journalist with a small Christian station, Isaac TV. Iqbal has gone to court to stop marriages and sheltered runaway brides, some as young as 13.

Muqadas’ mother Nasreen said she was promised about $5,000, which included the cost of the wedding and her daughter’s wedding dress. “But I have not seen anything yet,” she said.

“I really believed I was giving her a chance at a better life and also a better life for us,” Nasreen said.

___

PRIESTS AND BROKERS

Dozens of priests are paid by brokers to find brides for Chinese men, said Augustine, the provincial minorities minister, who is Christian. Many are from the small evangelical churches that have proliferated in Pakistan.

Gujranwala, a city north of Lahore, has been a particular target of brokers, with more than 100 local Christian women and girls married off to Chinese in recent months, according to Iqbal.

The city has several mainly Christian neighborhoods, largely dirt poor with open sewers running along narrow slum streets. Tucked away in the alleys are numerous evangelical churches, small cement structures unrecognizable except for small crosses outside.

Pastor Munch Morris said he knows a group of pastors in his neighborhood who work with a private Chinese marriage broker. Among them, he said, is a fellow pastor at his church who tells his flock, “God is happy because these Chinese boys convert to Christianity. They are helping the poor Christian girls.”

Morris opposes such marriages, calling them an insult. “We know these marriages are all for the sake of money.”

Rizwan Rashid, a parishioner at the city’s Roman Catholic St. John’s Church, said that two weeks earlier, a car pulled up to him outside the church gates. Two Pakistani men and a Chinese woman inside asked him if he knew of any girls who want to marry a Chinese man.

“They told me her life would be great,” he said. “Everything would be paid for by them.”

They were willing to pay him to help, but he said the church’s priest often warns his flock against such marriages, so he refused.

Brokers also troll brick kilns, where the poorest work essentially as slaves to pay off debts, and offer to pay off their workers’ debts in exchange for daughters as brides.

Pakistani and Chinese brokers work together in the trade. One prominent broker in Gujranwala is a Pakistani known only as Robinson. He refused to talk to the AP, but his wife Razia told the AP that they make arrangements through a Chinese marriage bureau in Islamabad.

Moqadas and another young woman from the same neighborhood, Mahek Liaqat, said Robinson arranged their marriages, providing photos of potential grooms. Afterward, they each described being taken to the same, multi-story house in Islamabad, a sort of boarding house with bedrooms. There, each met her husband for the first time face-to-face and spent her wedding night.

Mahek, 19, said she stayed there with her husband for a month, during which she saw several other girls brought in. She attended several weddings performed in the basement.

Other brides told of meeting their husbands at a similar house in a posh neighborhood of Lahore.

Simbal Akmal, 18, was taken there by her parents. Two other Christian girls were already there in a large sitting room, picking grooms. Three Chinese men were presented to Simbal, and her father demanded she choose one. She told him she didn’t want to marry, but he insisted, claiming “it was a matter of our honor,” she said.

“He had already promised I would marry one,” she said. “They just wanted money.”

She married, but immediately fled. She was joined by her sister, who refused her parents’ demands to marry a Chinese man. Both escaped to a refuge run by the activist, Iqbal.

___

IN CHINA

Muqadas said her husband had claimed to be a man of money, but when she arrived in China in early December, she found herself living “in a small house, just one room and a bedroom.”

She said he rarely let her out of the house on her own. He forced her to undergo a battery of medical tests that later she found were attempts to determine why she was not yet pregnant. On Christmas Eve, when she pressed him to take her to church, he slapped her and broke her phone, she said.

“I don’t have the words to tell you how difficult the last month there was,” said Muqadas. “He threatened me.”

Finally, he agreed to send her home after her family said they would go to the police.

Mahek said she hadn’t wanted to get married, but her parents insisted. Her Chinese husband was possessive and refused to let her leave the house. “He was just terrible,” she said.

In China, her husband, Li Tao, denied abusing Mahek. He said he was a Christian convert and worked for a state-owned Chinese company building roads and bridges when he met Mahek through a Pakistani matchmaker introduced by a Chinese friend.

He was taken by her at first sight, he said. “If you look at her and you see she’s right for you, that’s it, right?”

Li returned with Mahek last winter to his hometown of Chenlou, a village surrounded by wheat fields in coastal Jiangsu province. They moved into his mother’s home, a one-story courtyard house.

After Malek’s family reached out to their government for help to bring her back, the police showed up at Li’s home and said they were told he was illegally confining a woman in his home.

He said it was Mahek who refused to go outside.

“I wouldn’t force her into doing anything,” Li said. “She just had to learn to adapt to a new environment. I wasn’t asking her to change right away.” Still, he bought plane tickets to take her back to Pakistan.

Others, however, are unable to come back.

Mahek’s grandfather Idriis Masih said he contacted the parents of several other Pakistani girls whom Mahek had befriended through a phone app in China and who were desperate to return home. All the parents were poor and shrugged off his attempts to convince them to retrieve their daughters.

Each told him, “She is married now. It is her life,” he said.

Kang reported from Linyi, China. Associated Press researcher Shanshan Wang in Beijing contributed to this report

First Lull In Kashmir Since Latest India-Pakistan Escalation

In this handout photo released by the Indian Ministry of Defence, Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, left, meets with Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman at a hospital in New Delhi, India, Saturday, March 2, 2019. The captured Indian pilot was handed over Friday in a "gesture of peace" promised by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan amid a dramatic escalation with the country's archrival over the disputed region of Kashmir. (Indian Ministry of Defence Photo via AP)

BY ROSHAN MUGHAN

MUZAFFARABAD, PAKISTAN (AP) — Residents near the disputed boundary in divided Kashmir region said Sunday it was quiet overnight, their first lull since a dangerous escalation between Pakistan and India erupted last week bringing the two nuclear-armed rivals close to full-out war.

Many villagers used the calm in Pakistani-held Kashmir to leave their homes in Chakoti area along the so-called Line of Control, the demarcation line that divides the troubled Himalayan region on an Indian and a Pakistani sector, and move to safety.

Nazakat Hussain said his and many other families have no underground shelters or bunkers on their land to protect them and have no other option but to leave. The rough cold weather and snow, along with the cross-border shooting, prevented them from leaving earlier.

Pakistani government official Moazzam Zafar said some 200 families have already taken shelter in three large government buildings in the territory. Zafar said the authorities were providing warm clothing, bedding, food and medicines, and would establish more such camps.

At least eight civilians and two soldiers have been killed in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir since tensions soared following India’s airstrike last Tuesday inside Pakistan that New Delhi said targeted militants behind a Feb. 14 suicide bombing in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops.

Pakistan retaliated, shooting down a fighter jet on Wednesday and detaining its pilot, who was returned to India on Friday. India, in turn, on Saturday handed over the body of a Pakistani civilian prisoner beaten to death by inmates in a jail in India last week. The man, Skahir Ullah, was buried later Sunday in his home village of Sialkot in Punjab province.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan practically since their independence from British rule in 1947. The two countries each claim Kashmir in its entirety and have fought two of the three wars between them over it.

The rivals struck a cease-fire deal in 2003 but regularly violate it and trade cross-border fire.

Associated Press writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Khan Claims Win In Pakistan With Vows On Poverty, US Ties

In this photo provided by the office of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, Pakistani politician Imran Khan, chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, delivers his address in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, July 26, 2018. Khan declared victory Thursday for his party in the country’s general elections, promising a “new” Pakistan following a vote that was marred by allegations of fraud and militant violence. (Tehreek-e-Insaf via AP)

BY KATHY GANNON & MUNIR AHMED

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Former cricket star Imran Khan declared victory Thursday in Pakistan’s parliamentary election and vowed to run the country “as it has never before been run” by fighting corruption, seeking regional cooperation and forging a new relationship with the U.S. that was not “one-sided.”

TV stations reported Khan and his Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, maintained a commanding lead from Wednesday’s balloting. But his leading rival, Shahbaz Sharif, rejected the outcome, citing allegations of vote-rigging.

Pakistan’s election commission struggled with technical problems and had to revert to a manual count, delaying the announcement of final results until Friday. That left unclear whether the PTI will have a simple majority in the National Assembly or have to form a coalition government.

But that didn’t stop the 65-year-old Khan from proclaiming his triumph in an address to the nation, in which he pledged to create an Islamic welfare state to provide education and employment for the poor to fulfill a campaign promise to create 10 million jobs.

“Today in front of you, in front of the people of Pakistan, I pledge I will run Pakistan in such a way as it has never before been run,” Khan said, vowing to wipe out corruption, strengthen institutions he called dysfunctional and regain national pride by developing international relationships based on respect and equality.

While Khan’s appeared casual and conciliatory in his speech, his words were laced with passion. He said the United States treats Pakistan like a mercenary, giving it billions of dollars to fight the war on terrorism in a region beset with militant extremists.

“Unfortunately, so far our relations were one-sided. America thinks that it gives Pakistan money to fight for them. Because of this Pakistan suffered a lot,” said Khan, who has been critical of the U.S.-led conflict in neighboring Afghanistan.

He offered nothing to suggest an improvement in Pakistan’s already testy relationship with Washington since President Donald Trump’s tweets in January that accused Islamabad of taking U.S. aid and returning only lies and deceit.

Seeking good relations with his neighbors, Khan addressed Pakistan’s rival, India. The two nuclear powers have had a long-running conflict over the disputed region of Kashmir.

“Take one step toward us and we will take two steps toward you,” he said in a peace offering while still decrying widespread human rights abuses in Kashmir.

Khan also advocated an open border policy with Afghanistan, even suggesting the two countries embrace a “European Union” type relationship. The plan seems unlikely, with Pakistan’s military already building hundreds of border outposts and an accompanying fence along its western frontier with Afghanistan despite often-violent opposition from Kabul.

Khan focused on what he wanted to do for the poor in Pakistan and his vision of a country that bowed to no one, where everyone was equal under the law and taxes were paid by the rich to fund services for the less fortunate.

His campaign message of a new Pakistan seemed to resonate with young voters in a country where 64 percent of its 200 million people are under 30.

Khan said the elections were the most transparent and promised to investigate every complaint of irregularity that his opponents presented.

“It is thanks to God (that) we won and we were successful,” he said.

More than a dozen TV channels projected the PTI would win as many as 119 seats of the 270 National Assembly seats that were contested, although the broadcasters did not disclose their methodology. The rest of the 342-seat parliament includes seats reserved for women and minorities. Voting for two seats was postponed after one candidate died during the campaign and another was disqualified.

Although rights groups and minorities expressed worries ahead of the voting about radical religious groups taking part, moderate voices seemed to have prevailed: None of the 265 candidates fielded by the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba won. That includes the son of co-founder and U.S.-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed, who has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

The candidates campaigned under the little known Allah-o-Akbar Tehreek party because Lashkar-e-Taiba is banned.

Even if Khan’s party wins a simple majority, he would need to wait until the president convenes the parliament to swear in the new lawmakers — traditionally within a week.

He also faces opposition over the result from Sharif. He heads the Pakistan Muslim League, the party of his older brother, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is in prison on corruption charges. TV projections give his party barely 61 seats.

The younger Sharif tweeted that “our democratic process has been pushed back by decades,” adding that “had the public mandate been delivered in a fair manner, we would have accepted it happily.”

Complaints also emerged from the independent Human Rights Commission, which issued a statement saying that women were not allowed to vote in some areas.

In other areas, it said, “polling staff appeared to be biased toward a certain party,” without elaborating. In the days before the election, leading rights activist I.A. Rehman called the campaign “the dirtiest” in Pakistan’s bumpy journey toward sustained democracy.

Analysts have expressed concern that disgruntled losers could create instability for the incoming government, which must deal with a crumbling economy, crippling debt and a raging militancy.

The voting was marred by a suicide bombing in the southwestern city of Quetta, the Baluchistan provincial capital, that killed 31 people as they waited to vote. A bombing in the same province earlier this month killed 149 people, including a candidate for office. Baluchistan has been roiled by relentless attacks, both by the province’s secessionists and Sunni militants who have killed hundreds of Shiites there.

The election marked only the second time in Pakistan’s 71-year history that one civilian government has handed power to another.

There were widespread concerns during the campaign about manipulation by the military, which has directly or indirectly ruled Pakistan for most of its existence. The military had deployed 350,000 troops at the 85,000 polling stations.

In a tweet, Pakistan’s military spokesman Gen. Asif Ghafoor called allegations of interference “malicious propaganda.”

Associated Press Writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Tensions Soar Along Indian, Pakistan Frontier In Kashmir

Smoke rises from a residential building following shelling from the Pakistan side of the border, in Ranbir Singh Pura district of Jammu and Kashmir, India, Friday, Jan.19,2018. Tensions soared along the volatile frontier between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir as soldiers of the rivals continued shelling villages and border posts for third day Friday.

SRINAGAR, INDIA (AP) — Tensions have soared along the volatile frontier between India and Pakistan in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, as rival troops shelled villages and border posts for a third day Friday.

Three civilians and two soldiers were killed on both sides in the latest clash, officials in the two countries said, as each blamed the other for initiating the violence. Indian officials said two civilians, an army soldier and a paramilitary soldier died and at least 24 civilians and two soldiers were injured in Indian-controlled Kashmir. According to Pakistani officials, Indian fire on Friday killed a civilian and wounded nine others in Sialkot in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province.

An Indian paramilitary officer said soldiers were responding to Pakistani firing and shelling on dozens of border posts and called it an "unprovoked" violation of a 2003 cease-fire accord. Angered over the rising violence, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry summoned Indian Deputy High Commissioner J.P. Singh and condemned what it called "unprovoked cease-fire violations" by India.

Each country has also accused the other of initiating past border skirmishes and causing civilian and military casualties. The fighting is taking place along a somewhat-defined frontier where each country has a separate paramilitary border force guarding the lower-altitude 200-kilometer (125-mile) boundary separating Indian-controlled Kashmir and the Pakistani province of Punjab.

The contentious frontier also includes a 740-kilometer (460-mile) rugged and mountainous stretch called the Line of Control that is guarded by the armies of India and Pakistan. The Indian officer, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with official policy, said Friday's shelling came after relative calm overnight in Jammu following two days of fighting that left at least three civilians and a soldier dead and several others wounded on both sides.

The border guard official said by Friday evening fighting had stopped in most places but continued at about half a dozen outposts. The fighting escalated late Friday in Sunderbani sector, where Indian and Pakistani soldiers fired guns and mortars at each other's positions. Col. Nitin Joshi, an Indian army spokesman, said one soldier was killed in the Pakistani firing.

Indian police officer S.D. Singh said shells have landed in dozens of villages since early Friday. He said authorities deployed bulletproof vehicles to evacuate people who were injured and sick. Bullets and shrapnel scarred homes and walls amid the intense firing and shelling.

Dozens of schools in villages along the frontier have been closed and authorities advised residents to stay indoors as shells and bullets rained down. Some damage to houses was also reported on the Indian side.

Pakistan urged India to respect the cease-fire, investigate the latest incidents and maintain peace on the frontier. It also asked India to allow the U.N. Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan to play its mandated role in accordance with Security Council resolutions.

"This unprecedented escalation in cease-fire violations by India is continuing" since 2017 despite calls for restraint from Islamabad, Pakistan's statement said. India's foreign ministry condemned what it called "continued and unprecedented cease-fire violation by Pakistan, which has caused loss of lives and properties."

"Pakistan violates the cease-fire as a cover to infiltrate terrorists across the border into India. We of course retaliate in such cases," said Raveesh Kumar, India's foreign ministry spokesman. "We'll also take up the matter at appropriate level with the Pakistani side."

Also Friday, India's External Affairs Ministry summoned Syed Haider Shah, a top Pakistan embassy official in New Delhi, and conveyed the government's "grave concerns at the continued ceasefire violations and deliberate targeting of innocent civilians by Pakistan forces."

More than 100 such violations have been carried out by Pakistan forces in Kashmir so far during 2018, a ministry statement said. India and Pakistan have a long history of bitter relations over Kashmir, a Himalayan territory claimed by both in its entirety. They have fought two of their three wars over the region since they gained independence from British colonial rule in 1947.

The exchange of fire comes days after Islamabad accused Indian forces of killing four Pakistani soldiers along the Line of Control in Kashmir, where rebel groups demand that Kashmir be united either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training the rebels, which Pakistan denies. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed in the uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown since 1989.

Ahmed reported from Islamabad, Pakistan. Associated Press writer Ashok Sharma in New Delhi contributed to this story.

Shahid Abbasi Elected As Pakistan's Prime Minister

Pakistan's premier-designate Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, right, leaves with his aids after meeting with politicians in Parliament house in Islamabad, Pakistan, Monday, July 31, 2017. Pakistan's parliament will meet Tuesday to elect a new prime minister after the disqualification of three-term prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party nominated Sharif's longtime loyalist Abbasi for the top slot on Saturday.

ISLAMABAD (AP, AUGUST 01, 2017) — Pakistan's lower house of parliament on Tuesday elected veteran lawmaker Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as the country's new prime minister, less than a week after the Supreme Court disqualified thrice-elected Nawaz Sharif for concealing assets.

Abbasi, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party, got 221 votes in the 342-member National Assembly. His closest rival Syed Naveed Qamar from the opposition Pakistan People's Party secured 47 votes, according to Ayaz Sadiq, the National Assembly Speaker. Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed, a lawmaker from the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, founded by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, got 33 votes.

Abbasi replaced the 67-year-old Sharif, who was disqualified by the top court Friday for concealing assets — specifically, that his son's Dubai-based company listed a monthly salary for him. Sharif claimed he never received any of that money.

In his first televised speech, an emotionally-charged Abbasi dismissed the corruption allegations against Sharif as baseless and said he hoped the deposed premier would return to parliament soon. He said the people of Pakistan did not accept Sharif's disqualification, and vowed to follow in his footsteps of Sharif.

Abbasi stopped short of criticizing the judiciary, saying legal experts were surprised by the decision to disqualify Sharif and that "no one is willing to accept it." He said Sharif was victimized for putting Pakistan back on the path of progress and bringing in foreign investments worth billions of dollars to Pakistan.

He said Sharif was able to attract foreign investment because he was an honest person. Abbasi also asked his countrymen to pay their taxes honestly as he plans to take stern action against anyone involved in tax evasion. He said rich people must pay their taxes for Pakistan's economy to improve. He promised better health and education facilities for his countrymen.

Abbasi said he would ensure the rule of law and that he would run the country strictly according to the constitution. Sharif's party has said it will file a petition with the Supreme Court next week asking for a review of its decision to disqualify him.

Sharif's party wants Abbasi to serve as an interim premier until Sharif's younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab province, wins a national assembly seat in a by-election. The opposition has criticized this intention as dynastic and undemocratic. The next general election is due to take place in June 2018.

Abbasi's rival candidates Qamar and Ahmed congratulated him on becoming the new prime minister. Meanwhile, a female lawmaker from Khan's party on Tuesday quit the party, calling the party leader a "characterless person."

Ayesha Gulalai Wazir posted a tweet saying the honor of female party members was not safe because Khan had an "immoral character." There was no immediate comment from Khan's party about the allegation.

Officials: No Need For Trump's Approval To Use Massive Bomb

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

APRIL 15, 2017

A GBU-43B, or massive ordnance air blast weapon, the U.S. military's largest non-nuclear bomb, which contains 11 tons of explosives. The Pentagon said U.S. forces in Afghanistan dropped a GBU-43B on an Islamic State target in Afghanistan on Thursday, April 13, 2017, in what a Pentagon spokesman said was the first-ever combat use of the bomb. (Eglin Air Force Base via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. commander in Afghanistan who ordered use of the "mother of all bombs" to attack an Islamic State stronghold near the Pakistani border didn't need and didn't request President Donald Trump's approval, Pentagon officials said Friday.

The officials said that even before Trump took office in January, Gen. John Nicholson had standing authority to use the bomb, which is officially called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat. The bomb, dropped by a special operations MC-130 aircraft, had been in Afghanistan since January.

The officials weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity. The bomb's use has attracted enormous attention, but its aim in Thursday's attack was relatively mundane by military standards: destroy a tunnel and cave complex used by Islamic State fighters in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan.

Nicholson had a secondary goal in mind, however, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters. The official said Nicholson wanted to demonstrate to leaders of the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan the seriousness of his determination to eliminate the group as a military threat.

The official said use of the weapon had nothing to do with sending a message to any other country, including North Korea. The Air Force estimates each MOAB costs about $170,000 to build. It hasn't said how much it cost to develop the bomb or how many exist. An Air Force spokeswoman, Erika A. Yepsen, said the bomb was made "in-house," with some parts manufactured by the Air Force itself, so the overall cost is only an estimate. Most weapons are made by defense companies under written government contracts.

Nine years ago the Air Force published an account of how it came to manufacture the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, known technically as the GBU-43B, a designation that reflects the fact that it is precision-guided. The weapon from which it evolved, the BLU-82 (Bomb Live Unit-82), was about half MOAB's size and was an unguided, or dumb, bomb.

The MOAB was developed and built at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida by the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate. The Air Force account, written in March 2008, said MOAB "started out simply as an idea" that became a request in late November 2002 as the administration of George W. Bush was contemplating invading Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein.

The Air Force conducted and released video footage of the bomb's final test detonation on March 11, 2003, just days before the U.S. launched its invasion, which successfully removed Saddam from power but led to an unanticipated Sunni Arab insurgency that created a military quagmire and has yet to return Iraq to normalcy.

Asked about the test on the day it was conducted, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said, "There is a psychological component to all aspects of warfare. The goal is to not have a war. The goal is to have the pressure be so great that Saddam Hussein cooperates. Short of that, an unwillingness to cooperate, the goal is to have the capabilities of the coalition so clear and so obvious that there is an enormous disincentive for the Iraqi military to fight against the coalition, and there's an enormous incentive for Saddam Hussein to leave and spare the world a conflict."

The 2008 Air Force account quoted one of the MOAB project leaders, Robert Hammack, as saying many of the bomb parts were engineered and made in-house, and that the project drew so much interest that experts came out of retirement to work on it. Once built, the bomb was transported to an ammunition depot in Oklahoma to be filled with explosive materials and painted.

"A little known fact is why the MOAB is green," Hammack was quoted as saying. "Since we were in such a rush to get the weapon into our inventory to send over to aid the (Iraq) war effort, resources were limited. The weekend the MOAB arrived, the only color available in the amount we needed was John Deere green."

Pakistani School Reopens After Taliban Massacre Of Students

A Pakistani mother escorts her children to the Army Public School targeted by Taliban militants, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Monday, Jan. 12, 2015. Pakistani children and their parents returned Monday to the school where Taliban gunmen killed 150 of their classmates and teachers

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN (AP) — Pakistani children returned on Monday to the school where Taliban gunmen killed 150 of their classmates and teachers last month, clutching their parents' hands tightly in a poignant symbol of perseverance despite the horrors they had endured.

It was the first time the school had reopened since the assault and security was tight. The nation has been reeling from the Dec. 16 terrorist attack in Peshawar — one of the worst Pakistan has experienced. The violence carried out by seven Taliban militants put a spotlight on whether the authorities can end the stubborn insurgency that kills and maims thousands every year.

The massacre also horrified parents across the nation and prompted officials to implement tighter security at schools. For Peshawar parents like Abid Ali Shah, Monday morning was especially painful as he struggled to get his sons ready for school, something his wife used to do. She was a teacher at the school and was killed in the violence. Both of his sons attended the school. The youngest was shot in the head but survived after the militants thought he was dead.

"A hollowness in my life is getting greater. I am missing my wife," Shah said. He said he had wanted to shift his children to a different school or city but decided not to because they still have to take exams this spring: "Everything is ruined here, everything."

His older son, Sitwat Ali Shah, 17, said it wasn't until he saw his brother break down in tears as they prepared to go to school that he did as well. Sitwat said both he and his brother have trouble sleeping and often wake up, crying for their mother.

"Those who have done all this to all of us cannot be called humans," Sitwat said, adding he still wanted to go back to school and become an air force officer. A ceremony was held at the school to mark its reopening, but classes were to restart on Tuesday. Security was tight, part of a countrywide effort to boost safety measures at schools in the wake of the attack. Schools around Pakistan have raised their boundary walls, added armed guards and installed metal detectors, although many have questioned why it took such a horrible attack to focus attention on school safety.

The government has stepped up military operations in the tribal areas, reinstated the death penalty and allowed military courts to try civilians — all attempts to crack down on terrorism. But in an attack on Monday, gunmen killed seven paramilitary soldiers in the southwestern Baluchistan province, underscoring the dangers the country still faces.

In Peshawar, media and vehicles were kept hundreds of meters (yards) away from the Army Public School, and two helicopters circled overhead. The chief of Pakistan's army, Gen. Raheel Sharif, was on hand with his wife to greet and console the students.

Teacher Andleeb Aftab, who lost her 10th grade son, Huzaifa, in the attack, came in a black dress and head scarf, walking to the place where she had last seen her son alive. She said she chose to go back to school rather than sit at home and keep mourning.

"I have come here because the other kids are also my kids," she said. "I will complete the dreams of my son, the dreams I had about my son, by teaching other students." On Sunday night, 15-year-old Ahmed Nawaz said he is still in constant pain and being treated for his badly wounded left arm but that he was determined to go back.

For the militants, he said he had one message: "We are not scared of you."

Associated Press writer Abdul Sattar contributed to this report from Quetta, Pakistan

Taliban Assault On Pakistan School Leaves 141 Dead

A plainclothes security officer escorts students evacuated from a school as Taliban fighters attack another school nearby in Peshawar, Pakistan, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014. Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in the northwestern Pakistani city, killing and wounding scores, officials said, in the worst attack to hit the country in over a year.

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN (AP) — In the deadliest slaughter of innocents in Pakistan in years, Taliban gunmen attacked a military-run school Tuesday and killed 141 people — almost all of them students — before government troops ended the siege.

The massacre of innocent children horrified a country already weary of unending terrorist attacks. Pakistan's teenage Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai — herself a survivor of a Taliban shooting — said she was "heartbroken" by the bloodshed.

Even Taliban militants in neighboring Afghanistan decried the killing spree, calling it "un-Islamic." If the Pakistani Taliban extremists had hoped the attack would cause the government to ease off its military offensive that began in June in the country's tribal region, it appeared to have the opposite effect. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pledged to step up the campaign that — along with U.S. drone strikes — has targeted the militants.

"The fight will continue. No one should have any doubt about it," Sharif said. "We will take account of each and every drop of our children's blood." Taliban fighters have struggled to maintain their potency in the face of the military operation. They vowed a wave of violence in response to the operation, but until Tuesday, there has only been one major attack by a splinter group near the Pakistan-India border in November. Analysts said the school siege showed that even diminished, the militant group still could inflict horrific carnage.

The rampage at the Army Public School and College began in the morning when seven militants scaled a back wall using a ladder, said Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a military spokesman. When they reached an auditorium where students had gathered for an event, they opened fire.

A 14-year-old, Mehran Khan, said about 400 students were in the hall when the gunmen broke through the doors and started shooting. They shot one of the teachers in the head and then set her on fire and shouted "God is great!" as she screamed, added Khan, who survived by playing dead.

From there, they went to classrooms and other parts of the school. "Their sole purpose, it seems, was to kill those innocent kids. That's what they did," Bajwa said. Of the 141 people slain before government troops ended the assault eight hours later, 132 were children and nine were staff members. Another 121 students and three staff members were wounded.

The seven attackers, wearing vests of explosives, all died in the eight-hour assault. It was not immediately clear if they were all killed by the soldiers or whether they blew themselves up, he said. The wounded — some still wearing their green school blazers — flooded into hospitals as terrified parents searched for their children. By evening, funeral services were already being held for many of the victims as clerics announced the deaths over mosque loudspeakers.

The government declared three days of mourning for what appeared to be Pakistan's deadliest since a 2007 suicide bombing in the port city of Karachi killed 150 people. "My son was in uniform in the morning. He is in a casket now," wailed one parent, Tahir Ali, as he came to the hospital to collect the body of his 14-year-old son, Abdullah. "My son was my dream. My dream has been killed."

One of the wounded students, Abdullah Jamal, said he was with a group of eighth, ninth and 10th graders who were getting first-aid instructions and training with a team of army medics when the violence became real. Panic broke out when the shooting began.

"I saw children falling down who were crying and screaming. I also fell down. I learned later that I have got a bullet," he said, speaking from his hospital bed. Another student, Amir Mateen, said they locked the door from the inside when they heard the shooting, but gunmen blasted through anyway and opened fire.

Responding to the attack, armored personnel carriers were deployed around the school, and a military helicopter circled overhead. A little more than 1,000 students and staff were registered at the school, which is part of a network run by the military, although the surrounding area is not heavily fortified. The student body is made up of both children of military personnel as well as civilians.

Most of the students appeared to be civilians rather than children of army staff, said Javed Khan, a government official. Analysts said the militants likely targeted the school because of its military connections.

"It's a kind of a message that 'we can also kill your children,'" said Pakistani analyst Zahid Hussain. In a statement to reporters, Taliban spokesman Mohammed Khurasani claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was retribution for the military's operation in nearby North Waziristan, the northwestern tribal region where the group's fighters largely have been based.

"We targeted their kids so that they could know how it feels when they hit our kids," Khurasani said. He said the attackers were advised not to target "underage" children but did not elaborate on what that meant.

In its offensive, the military said it would go after all militant groups operating in the region. Security officials and civilians feared retribution by militants, but Pakistan has been relatively calm.

The attack raised the issue of whether this was the last gasp of a militant group crippled by a government offensive or whether the militants could regroup. Hussain, the Pakistani analyst, called the attack an "act of desperation."

The violence will throw public support behind the campaign in North Waziristan, he said. It also shows that the Pakistani Taliban still maintains a strong intelligence network and remains a threat. The attack drew swift condemnation from around the world. U.S. President Barack Obama said the "terrorists have once again showed their depravity."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry added: "The images are absolutely gut-wrenching: young children carried away in ambulances, a teacher burned alive in front of the students, a house of learning turned into a house of unspeakable horror."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Pakistan's longtime regional rival, called it "a senseless act of unspeakable brutality." "My heart goes out to everyone who lost their loved ones today. We share their pain & offer our deepest condolences," Modi said in a series of tweeted statements.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was a "an act of horror and rank cowardice to attack defenseless children while they learn." The violence recalled the attack on Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman outside her school in the Swat Valley for daring to speak up about girls' rights. She survived to become a global advocate for girls' education and received her Nobel Peace Prize last week, but has not returned to Pakistan in the two years since the shooting out of security concerns.

"Innocent children in their school have no place in horror such as this," the 17-year-old said. "I condemn these atrocious and cowardly acts."

Santana reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Munir Ahmed in Peshawar, Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

Pakistan Says Top al-Qaida Militant Killed In Raid

Adnan Shukrijumah. The Pakistan military issued a statement Saturday Dec. 6, 2014 saying Adman Shukrijumah was killed in a raid in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani soldiers killed a top al-Qaida operative Saturday who was indicted in the U.S. for his alleged involvement in a plot to bomb New York's subway system, the military said in a statement.

The death of Adnan Shukrijumah is the latest blow to the terror organization still reeling from the 2011 killing of leader Osama bin Laden and now largely eclipsed by the militant Islamic State group. It also marks a major achievement for the Pakistani military, which mounted a widespread military operation in the northwest this summer.

The military announced Shukrijumah's death in a statement, saying that he was killed along with two other suspected militants in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal area early Saturday. South Waziristan is part of the mountainous territory bordering Afghanistan that is home to various militant groups fighting both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"The al-Qaida leader, who was killed by the Pakistan army in a successful operation, is the same person who had been indicted in the United Stated," said a senior Pakistani army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to journalists.

As al-Qaida's head of external operations, the 39-year-old Shukrijumah occupied a position once held by Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The FBI lists Shukrijumah, a Saudi national, as a "most wanted" terrorist and the U.S. State Department had offered up to a $5 million reward for his capture.

Federal prosecutors in the U.S. allege Shukrijumah had recruited three men in 2008 to receive training in the lawless tribal region of Pakistan for the subway attack. The three traveled to Pakistan to avenge the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan but were persuaded by al-Qaida operatives to return to the United States for a suicide-bombing mission against a major target such as the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square or Grand Central Terminal.

Eventually, the men settled on a plot to blow themselves up at rush hour, according to testimony in federal court. Attorney General Eric Holder has called that New York plot one of the most dangerous since 9/11.

Adis Medunjanin, originally from Bosnia, was sentenced to life in prison in November 2012 for his role in a foiled 2009 plot. Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay cooperated with the government in the hopes of getting a reduced sentence.

After the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Shukrijumah was seen as one of al-Qaida's best chances to attack inside the U.S. or Europe, captured terrorist Abu Zubaydah told U.S. authorities. Shukrijumah studied computer science and chemistry at a community college in Florida and is thought to be the only al-Qaida leader to have once held a U.S. green card. He lived in Miramar, Florida, with his mother and five siblings.

He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father, a Muslim cleric and missionary trained in Saudi Arabia, decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn. But at some point in the late 1990s, the FBI says Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in "jihad," or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia. He eventually went to a training camp in Afghanistan where he studied the use of weapons, explosives and battle tactics.

When the FBI showed up to arrest him as a material witness to a terrorism case in 2003, he had already left the country. In 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft called Shukrijumah a "clear and present danger" to the United States. Experts said what made him so dangerous was his firsthand knowledge of the United States. There was no immediate comment from the U.S. to the news of Shukrijumah's death.

Spokesmen for the New York Police Department and the U.S. attorney's office for the Eastern District of New York did not respond Saturday to emails seeking comment on the report of Shukrijumah's death.

The Pakistani military said that Shukrijumah had recently moved from the North Waziristan tribal area to South Waziristan to avoid a military operation the Pakistanis launched in June in North Waziristan. The military said he was hiding in a compound when he was killed but gave few other details about the raid. One Pakistani soldier was killed and another seriously wounded during the assault, the military said.

Pakistan's army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa, said on Twitter that five "terrorists" also were detained in the raid. The United States has been pushing Pakistan for years to launch an operation in North Waziristan, the last area of the tribal region bordering Afghanistan where the Pakistani military had not forcefully moved to root out militants. The military says they have killed 1,200 militants in the North Waziristan operation and cleared 90 percent of the territory.

Shukrijumah's death is a significant success for Pakistan's military, Pakistani security analyst Zahid Hussain said. "They seem to have developed a strong intelligence networks in the tribal areas," he said.

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.

Malala's Improbable Journey To Nobel Peace Prize

Malala Yousafzai poses with a bouquet after speaking during a media conference at the Library of Birmingham, in Birmingham, England, Friday, Oct. 10, 2014, after she was named as winner of The Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize 2014, is awarded jointly to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India, for risking their lives to fight for children’s rights. Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two-years ago in Pakistan for insisting that girls have the right to an education.

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Malala Yousafzai celebrated her Nobel Peace Prize where she always wished to be: in school.

The 17-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for daring to want an education learned she had become the youngest Nobel laureate ever Friday while attending classes at Edgbaston High School for girls in Birmingham, the city in central England that she now calls home.

The teenager had traveled to Birmingham for medical treatment after being targeted by the Taliban for standing up to the group's hard-line interpretation of Islam that limits girls' access to education. She was shot while returning home from school in Pakistan's volatile Swat Valley two years ago, almost to the day.

"This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard. I speak for them and I stand up with them," she said at a news conference Friday at Birmingham Library. "They have rights. They have the right to receive a quality education. They have the right not to suffer from child labor, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life."

She said it was an honor to share the prize with Kailash Satyarthi of India, 60, who has spent a lifetime standing up against child slavery and exploitation. And she invited the prime ministers of their two rival nations, India and Pakistan, to attend the Nobel awards ceremony.

Malala's case won worldwide recognition, and the teen became a symbol for the struggle for women's rights in Pakistan. In an indication of her reach, she spoke before the United Nations and made the shortlist for Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2012.

But the journey was simply improbable. On Oct. 9, 2012, Malala, then 15, climbed into the back of a pick-up truck used to transport Swat Valley children home from school. They laughed and talked as the truck rumbled over roads lined with pot holes.

As they approached a narrow bridge over a garbage-strewn stream, a masked man with a gun suddenly stopped the truck. Another man with a pistol jumped into the back. "Who is Malala?" he shouted. The girls did not answer but heads automatically swiveled toward her. The man raised his pistol. One bullet hit Malala on the top of her head. Two other students were also hit, less seriously.

Malala was transferred to a military hospital near Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, as her head swelled dangerously. Her father, Ziauddin, was certain his daughter would not survive the night. He sent a message to his brother-in-law in Swat to prepare a coffin.

Pakistani doctors removed a bullet that entered her head and traveled toward her spine before she was flown to Britain for more specialized brain trauma care. She woke up a week later at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

She says she regained consciousness with one thought: "Thank God I'm not dead." Malala gradually regained her sight and her voice. She was reunited with her parents. Soon there were pictures and stuffed animals at her side. She sent messages to well-wishers.

Three months later she walked out of the hospital, smiling shyly as she cautiously strode down the corridor. "She is quite well and happy on returning home — as we all are," her father told The Associated Press at the time.

Pakistan made Malala's father its education attache in Birmingham, giving the family stability and Malala a safe place to go to school. She went back to school as soon as she could, confessing that math was her least favorite subject. All the while, she campaigned for the rights of children to an education — meeting President Barack Obama, attending rights conferences, becoming the keynote speaker at corporate events in London. She began rubbing elbows with people who had the power and the money to help her realize her dreams.

All along, she delighted many by simply being young, determined and most of all, herself. At a Vodafone conference celebrating women, she confided that she didn't have a cell phone. The crowd chuckled at the notion of a teenager who admitted she had no need for a phone.

With British journalist Christina Lamb, she co-authored a memoir, "I am Malala," that made clear that she was, in fact, also a regular teenager. She loves the TV show "Ugly Betty," whose main character works at a fashion magazine. She likes pop star Justin Bieber, watches the television cooking show "MasterChef."

And on Friday, the people who helped her on the journey — and those just touched by her story along the way — couldn't help but be swept up by the magic of it all. "Malala is an inspiration for the many women in Afghanistan and Pakistan who have been fighting for their rights and struggling against the misogynous policies of the Taliban and local warlords," said David Cortright, co-author of "Afghan Women Speak" and a professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

"As we know, people learn best from personal stories. Malala's story is a powerful antidote to extremist propaganda, and the Nobel Prize reinforces its impact," he said. As news of her Nobel spread, doctors in Birmingham offered congratulations, noting her focus and dedication. And the people of the city that threw its arms out to welcome her simply nodded their heads. No surprise at this news. She's liked and well known in Birmingham, a city that Malala has embraced, proudly describing herself as a "Brummie," like other locals.

"Sure, puts a bit of pride into it," said retired aluminum worker John Mullan, 78, of the news the city's adopted daughter had won a Nobel Prize. "She's just young girl who stood up to them. Many other people wouldn't have done that."

Malala remains determined to return to Pakistan one day and enter politics. On Friday, her growing polish was clear. She spoke from the heart in three languages, offering an almost uncanny combination of a teenager with a vision and a diplomat with a platform.
She did need a box, however, so that she could be seen over the podium. She will split a $1.1 million cash award with co-winner Satyarthi. Malala said the joint prize sends a message that the people of their rival nations — and Hindus and Muslims — can work together.
"We support each other," she said. Then, standing alongside her parents and brothers, she posed for family photographs while the world's media begged them to look their way. Her normally reticent mother, who has more than once hidden when cameras emerged, stood alongside, beaming.
What everyone wanted to know was: How did she learn the news? How did a schoolgirl who has just been pulled out of a chemistry class react upon hearing she had just received the world's most prestigious prize?
"I felt really honored," she said. There was probably some jumping up and down, but she didn't mention that. Then, she said, she turned around and headed back to class. She was back in time for physics.

Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon contributed reporting from Mingora, Pakistan.

Pakistan Nabs Militants Linked To Attack On Malala

Malala Yousafzai, a 16-year-old girl from Pakistan who was shot in the head by the Taliban last October for advocating education for girls, speaks about her fight for girls' education on the International Day of the Girl at the World Bank in Washington. Pakistan's army announced Friday, Sept. 12, 2014, that it had arrested 10 militants suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack on teenage activist Malala, who won world acclaim after she was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating gender equality and education for women.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan's army said Friday that it has arrested 10 militants suspected of involvement in the 2012 attack on teenage activist Malala Yousafzai, who won world acclaim after she was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating gender equality and education for women.

Army spokesman Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa said the detained men attacked Yousafzai, then 15, on orders from Mullah Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban. The army is currently waging a major offensive against the extremist group in North Waziristan, a tribal region along the border with Afghanistan that has long been a militant stronghold.

"The entire gang involved in the murder attempt... has been busted," Bajwa said, adding that the "terrorists" were part of Tehrik-e-Taliban, an umbrella group encompassing militant organizations across the tribal areas.

Malala, a precocious teenage activist who had called for expanding girls' education in deeply conservative areas of Pakistan, was shot in the head in October 2012 while returning from school. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack.

Malala was initially treated in Pakistan, but was later flown to a hospital in Britain, where she now lives with her family. "This is good news for our family and most importantly, for the people of Pakistan and the civilized world. This first step of apprehending Malala's attackers signifies the beginning of real hope for the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives have been affected by terrorism," Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, said in a statement.

Malala is from the northwestern Swat Valley, once home to Fazlullah, who was elevated to his current leadership position after his predecessor, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan.

Fazlullah has been on the run since 2009, when Pakistan launched a major offensive in the Swat Valley to eliminate militants who were trying to overthrow the government and impose a harsh version of Islamic law. Islamic extremists believe women should largely confine themselves to the home, and view girls' education as a sinister Western import.

Pakistan believes Fazlullah is hiding in Afghanistan, and Bajwa said Islamabad had raised the issue with the Afghan government. Both countries have long accused each other of ignoring militants who launch cross-border attacks from their territory.

"We will continue our efforts until (Fazlullah) is arrested or killed," Bajwa told a televised news conference in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. He did not say when or where the men were captured, but said security agencies detained all 10 in a coordinated operation acting on information from one of the members of the cell. He said the head of the cell had also been arrested.

"The group acted upon the instructions of Mullah Fazlullah who, while based in Kunar, Afghanistan, passed instructions through his two associates," he said. He added that it was a "known fact" that Fazlullah and other "terrorists" are hiding in Afghanistan.

The arrests come at a time when Pakistan's military is carrying out a major operation against militants in North Waziristan. Pakistan launched the June 15 operation after militants attacked one of the country's busiest airports, in the southern city of Karachi, shocking the nation.

The military says it has so far killed at least 975 militants and that the operation is progressing as planned.

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Pakistani Girls Struggle To Be Educated

A young Pakistani girl works on her mid-term papers in a school in Mingora, Swat Valley, Pakistan. Malala Yousafzai's struggle for girls to be educated in a deeply conservative society led to her shooting by the Taliban two years ago, while her relentless campaign for women's was rewarded Friday, Oct. 10, 2014, by the recognition of her work as she was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN (AP) — Malala Yousafzai's struggle for girls to be educated in deeply conservative parts of Pakistan led to her being shot and nearly killed by the Taliban two years ago, while her relentless campaign for women's rights was rewarded Friday when she was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala, who moved to Britain for treatment and later settled there, tirelessly continued her campaign for a woman's right to an education in Pakistan and won international recognition for her struggle.


In Pakistan her campaign lives on, as young girls and women struggle to get an education. Here are a series of images by Muhammed Muheisen and the late Anja Niedringhaus focusing on the education of young girls in Malala's hometown of Mingora, in the Swat Valley, and in the outskirts of the capital Islamabad.

Taken in makeshift schools set up in slums and mosques, many show adult volunteers teaching children with the limited resources they have. In Mingora they show girls attending Malala's old school.

Follow AP photographers and photo editors on Twitter: http://apne.ws/15Oo6jo
Follow Muhammed Muheisen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Muheisen81