SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- Police have arrested around 150 people accused of burning dozens of Christian houses in eastern Pakistan after a non-Muslim was accused of making offensive comments about Islam's Prophet Muhammad, police said Sunday as Christians rallied against the destruction. The Christian demonstrators blocked a main highway in Lahore and police fired tear gas shells to disperse the protesters who demanded assistance from the government. Government spokesman Pervaiz Rasheed promised the government would help hem rebuild…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -A suicide bomber blew himself up at a Defence Ministry gate in Kabul on Saturday killing nine civilians during a visit to Afghanistan by U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, underlining the insurgent threat as NATO troops prepare to leave. Hagel was nowhere near the explosion, said a spokesman for Afghanistan's NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). A U.S. defense official said Hagel was in a safe location at an ISAF facility. An Afghan Defence Ministry…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –To protest the murders of innocent Shias in Pakistan, the Grand Iranian Shia cleric, Ayatollah Vahid Khorasani cancelled all his classes next Saturday. He said that the human rights groups in Europe, the US and the UN lost all their credits due to their silence towards the murders of Shias in Pakistan and Bahrain. In his Wednesday morning class, the Grand Ayatollah pointed to the killings of men, women and children in Pakistan and Bahrain…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- When news of the two latest drone strikes emerged from Pakistan’s tribal belt in early February, it seemed to be business as usual by the C.I.A. Local and international media reports, citing unnamed Pakistani officials, carried typical details: swarms of American drones had swooped into remote areas, killing up to nine people, including two senior commanders of Al Qaeda. In Islamabad, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry lodged an official protest with the American Embassy. Yet there was…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) -- On January 10, 2013 eighty-seven people from the Hazara community in the city of Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province, were killed in a coordinated attack. Shortly thereafter, the group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility. This was not the first time the Hazara community has been subjected to violence. According to the Human Rights Watch, there were 125 people killed in Balochistan last year, "most of them from the Hazara community". Below is a Google Map provided by Hazara.net that…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – A bomb attack in Pakistan's largest city Karachi killed at least 45 people, including women and children, and wounded 135 others, police said. The blast on Sunday hit close to an area dominated by minority Shia Muslims, senior police official Ghulam Shabir Sheikh said, though he said that the target of the attack was not immediately clear. "The bomb also badly damaged two residential buildings. Women and children were among the dead and injured,"…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Twin explosions killed at least 45 people and wounded more than 150 in a Shiite Muslim area of Karachi in southern Pakistan, officials said. Nearby apartment buildings caught fire in the bombing. The cause of the first blast was a remote-detonated improvised explosive device strapped to a motorcycle at the entrance of Abbas Town, following which a CNG cylinder of a car exploded a few minutes later, the Pakistani based newspaper News International reports. A…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Pakistan's former head of state Parwaz Musharraf, who has been living in exile in Britain for the past five years, is preparing to return to his home country. Musharraf said in a press briefing he held in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates that he plans to return to Pakistan within a week after March 16, when the Pakistani government will hand over its authorities to a caretaker government. Saying that he wants to go…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – KARACHI - Pakistan's paramilitary forces on Friday launched a pre-dawn targeted operation in Quetta against militants from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), the banned Sunni outfit that claimed responsibility for the February 16 terror attack on the Hazara Shi'ite community in the city. Two LeJ militants were killed and four others were arrested following an exchange of fire in the Nawan Killy area of the capital of southwestern Balochistan province. Four…

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Shia Muslims in Pakistan have called for the trial of the head of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorist group following the recent deadly bombings targeting their community. “We have always been demanding arrest of all those involved in any act of sectarian violence, irrespective of their party affiliation,” Abdul Khaliq Hazara, leader of Pakistan’s Hazara Democratic Party, said Saturday.  Pakistan arrested Malik Ishaq, head of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi on Friday, following the deadly bomb attack that left…