The duo waved to crowds in a vehicle smothered in orange marigold garlands on their way to inaugurate a military aircraft factory, a collaboration between Tata Advanced Systems and Airbus, in Vadodara in Gujarat state.
It is the first visit by a Spanish premier to India for 18 years.
India’s defence ministry agreed to a $2.5 billion deal for 56 cargo and troop-carrying C295 aircraft from Airbus Defence and Space in 2021.
While 16 will be assembled in Seville in Spain — with the first deliveries made last year — the 40 remaining will be built in India.
The Indian plant in Vadodara will complete the first “Made in India” C295 aircraft in 2026.
“This factory will not only strengthen India-Spain relations, but also the ‘Make in India and Made for the World’ mission,” Modi said at the inauguration.
“It also reinforces India’s position as a trusted partner in global aerospace manufacturing.”
Sanchez said Airbus had opened a new chapter in India’s defence and space industry.
“This project strengthens our industrial ties while underlying our country’s deep commitment as a reliable and strategic partner,” he said, speaking in English.
“It shows, as well, the capabilities of the Spanish defence industry.”
India says trade between the nations is “robust and growing”, totalling $9.9bn in 2023, with India exporting $7.17bn and importing $2.74bn.
Spain, the 16th-biggest foreign investor in India with more than 280 Spanish companies in the country, sees opportunities including in construction, pharmacy, energy, as well as in the railways industry.
Leaders of Navantia, Spain’s state shipbuilding company, are part of the visit, seeking potential contracts, including for submarines.
Modi visited Spain in 2017, and held talks with Sanchez at the G20 summits in 2018 and 2021, but it is the first visit by a Spanish premier to India in nearly two decades.
Sanchez, who visited China last month, is looking to consolidate relations in Asia and with both Beijing and New Delhi.
The Spanish leader is slated to visit India’s financial capital Mumbai on Tuesday, where he will hold talks with business chiefs, as well as a visit to a Bollywood film studio in a bid to seek tie-ups with Spanish firms.
There is no special Budget red box commissioned for Rachel Reeves when, mid-morning on Wednesday, she becomes the first woman to brandish one outside Number 11.
There will be no such frills, few jokes and don’t expect a big rabbit out of the hat.
The number crunchers, bean counters, and abacus economists, so derided by Liz Truss, have taken back control. In that reused Red Box will be a boffin’s Budget.
Indeed, it could be defined by being the polar opposite of everything in Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s infamous mini-Budget two years ago.
They notoriously declined the offer of an Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast, with Truss later deciding the forecaster was part of a “deep state” conspiracy against her premiership.
This time the OBR has carried out its full 10-week, back-and-forth audit of both the public finances and all the tax and spend policy measures Reeves is planning, adding to what has felt like a drawn-out timetable of pre-Budget preparation.
The long three-month, post-election wait has cast a cloud over consumer and business confidence, and so the economy too. Business leaders tell me they can cope with tax rises, but prolonged uncertainty is an economic mood-killer. Some think an opportunity was missed, after three years of rolling crises, to jump on a significant summer turning point, with a new stable government and with interest rates finally falling.
Rachel Reeves is defining her Budget as the polar opposite of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s “fiscal event” two years ago
Still, the turning point could come now. This Budget forms part of a significant global economic pivot. The years of higher government spending and borrowing, alongside higher interest rates to dampen down rampant inflation, have given way to the opposite. Looser monetary policy, that is falling interest rates, and tighter fiscal policy, or higher taxes plus limits on borrowing, are the new normal.
In that Budget box are a wide range of tax rises. It might have been easier to list the ones that will not be going up. The most prominent, as I reported, will be the rise in employers’ National Insurance Contributions (NICs).
I understand that Reeves was advised internally in July simply to reverse the “unfunded” 2% cut to employees’ National Insurance that was introduced by the Conservatives. But she was adamant she could not breach the election promise not to raise this form of NICs.
Of course there will be a fierce row over whether raising the employer NICs amounts to the same thing. Labour insiders point to a footnote on their election material that clarified the manifesto commitment only applied to employee NICs, and say they were attacked on this point in Conservative ads and speeches. That implies the words of the Labour manifesto were carefully crafted to allow for a rise in employer NICs.
Last week, at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting in Washington DC, I challenged the chancellor directly over why she had not been clearer with the electorate about potentially widespread tax rises, including National Insurance.
She told me there were three factors behind this tough Budget. She repeated her calculation of an inherited “£22bn black hole” – that she says she inherited from her predecessor but had not foreseen. She now says that deficit will continue “in future years”.
She said the OBR would be publishing its review of how the overspend was “allowed to happen”, alongside the Budget. The Treasury sees this as an important sub-plot to Wednesday’s main Budget narrative.
Reeves also pointed to compensation payments for the infected blood and Horizon Post Office scandals which she said “the previous government did not put money in place for”.
Thirdly, the UK cannot continue on the path it is currently on when it comes to public spending, she told me, given the state of public services, such as prisons and the health service, and the new government’s promise that there “would not be a return to austerity”.
If Reeves gets it right, markets, and borrowing costs, should remain calm
What we have heard so far about the Budget sounds rather austere, but the chancellor is defining austerity as real-terms cuts in government departments. It appears departments will get top-ups to cope with the rising cost of services.
The trade-offs in her Budget are driven by her new fiscal rules. A new rule governing borrowing to invest, the “investment rule” will replace the previous debt rule, allowing the reversal of a planned £20bn cut to spending on major capital projects.
The new, broader measure of debt will have to fall in five years’ time. But it is the new “stability rule” that will be the binding constraint for Wednesday. All day-to-day spending in departments, on welfare and on debt interest, will have to be funded by tax revenue over a certain, as yet unspecified, timeframe. This could be a really quite fierce rule, far tougher than the Conservatives’ rule. Borrowing will only be for investment.
These two rules together will frame not just this Budget, but the next half decade, affecting every penny that the government spends. Labour has calculated that its landslide majority is rooted in a public desire to sort out underperforming public services, such as the NHS, and a decline in the quality of the public realm, from transport to town centres to housing. The real “black hole” in this view is in public services. The “fiscal fiction” of unrealistic spending plans will become fiscal fact.
By mandating that the spending gaps will be filled by significant tax rises, the strategy here is to communicate overwhelming political pain tolerance to markets that lend money to the exchequer. Essentially a massive majority will be used to credibly guarantee surpluses on “current” spending. Some taxes will go up, but the return is that it should help keep interest rates down for households, businesses and government itself.
As one prominent central banker told the margins of the IMF meeting, what is important in terms of market credibility is not just the amount of borrowing, but the coherence of the story and the strategy around that borrowing.
A new chancellor needs to establish their financial credibility, after all, credibility is famously hard to gain and much easier to lose. That is the purpose of these self-imposed rules. But in recent years, chancellors have also struggled with political credibility. More than one were in the job for too short a time to even have an official Budget.
It has not been an absolute given that all Budget measures will actually be enacted by a rebellious and unruly governing party. Over the Channel, that is precisely the problem in France, where Reeves’ counterpart Antoine Armand has to convince he can actually pass tough measures as a minority government. Rachel Reeves has no such problems.
Indeed, at an event in Washington addressing bankers, congressmen and senators at the British ambassador’s residence, the chancellor had a moment for reflection. Exactly two years before, Kwarteng had made this same address, amid widespread mini-Budget turmoil, including jokes about his shared role with Isaac Newton, who had solved a historic sterling crisis. As a result of the aftermath of Kwarteng’s “fiscal event”, board members of British clearing banks were having to reassure their counterparties that Britain was “OK”. Developing country finance ministers were making the same half-joke about Britain, the old master, now being the crisis economy.
For a chancellor who, two decades ago, was seconded to the British embassy as an economist, during one of Argentina’s debt crises, it was an anathema.
It is why on Thursday morning she and her team are expecting some anger from wealthier taxpayers and bad headlines in certain newspapers. But the flip-side will be relief for hard-pressed users of many public services, and especially what the Treasury hopes will be tranquil financial markets as she embarks on a long-term programme of long-delayed investments in Britain’s economic future.
It is a Budget that will be unpacked and unpicked for months, perhaps years to come.
At least 10 police officers and soldiers were killed in an armed clash with terrorists in Goharkuh, located in the Taftan County of the Sistan-Balochistan province on Saturday.
According to the Tehran Times, the clash began when unidentified gunmen ambushed a police patrol vehicle, leading to intense fighting which resulted in significant casualties among the patrol personnel.
Initial reports indicated that both the soldiers and law enforcement team members were targeted in the attack.
Furthermore, the attack was confirmed by the Sistan-Balochistan Police in a statement.
Later, the terrorist group Jaish al-Adl, referred to as Jaish al-Zulm within Iran, claimed responsibility for the assault, which took place around 1,200 kilometres southeast of Tehran.
Following the attack, the Iranian Minister of Interior Eskandar Mo’meni called for an immediate and thorough investigation into the incident.
He also instructed officials to examine the circumstances and broader implications of the attack.
In a statement, the ministry expressed deep concern over the violence and emphasised the need to bring those responsible to justice.
It also underscored the government’s commitment to maintaining security in the region.
Meanwhile, Muhammad Mudassir Tipu, the ambassador of Pakistan to Iran, condemned the heinous attack in Khash, calling terrorism a “regional threat”.
In a post on X, Tipu wrote: “I unequivocally condemn terrorist incident in Khash region of Iran today leading to loss of 10 precious lives. My heart goes out to bereaved families.
“Terrorism is regional threat Pakistan & Iran are committed to fight it with collective efforts. We stand by Iran at this critical juncture.”
The Sistan-Balochistan province, which shares borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, has seen multiple attacks targeting civilians and security forces in recent years.
Earlier in October, at least six people, including police officers, were killed in two separate attacks in the province.
Additionally, in September, a terrorist attack claimed the lives of three Iranian border guards — an officer and two conscripts — in Sistan-Balochistan.
As Kashmir marks the ‘Black Day’ in condemnation of India’s illegal occupation of the region, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in separate messages, expressed solidarity with the Kashmiris, pledging unwavering support until the achievement of their inalienable right to self-determination.
President Zardari said that Pakistan would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with its Kashmiri brothers and sisters until the final resolution of the Kashmir dispute and freedom of Kashmir.
The president urged the international community to pressurise India to halt its human rights abuses in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), alleviate the suffering of Kashmiris and implement UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.
He also condemned India’s ongoing atrocities in the illegally occupied territory and reaffirmed Pakistan’s unwavering moral, diplomatic and political support for the Kashmiri people’s just cause.
In his message on the occasion, PM Shehbaz Sharif, said that the people of IIOJK have suffered countless hardships during the last 77 years of occupation.
He said India had been taking successive steps to tighten its grip over IIOJK since August 5, 2019, when New Delhi abolished the special status of the disputed region.
“India’s nefarious designs are aimed at undermining the disputed status of IIOJK and denying the Kashmiri people their democratic right to decide their own future,” he said.
The PM promised that Pakistanis will continue to extend full moral, diplomatic and political support for Kashmiris.
Meanwhile, Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs, Gilgit-Baltistan and SAFRON Engineer Amir Muqam also reaffirmed Pakistan’s resolve to continue extending political, diplomatic and moral support to Kashmiris.
In his message on the occasion of Kashmir Black Day, he said India was committing worst human rights violations in IIOJK and trying to stop the struggle of Kashmiris through military atrocities.
The minister said the entire Pakistani nation paid tribute to the brave and courageous Kashmiris who were continuing their struggle despite India’s brutal actions.
Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and all over the world are observing Black Day to send a message of rejecting India’s illegal occupation of their homeland.
It was on October 27, 1947, that Indian troops invaded Jammu and Kashmir in blatant violation of the partition plan and occupied region against the will of the Kashmiri people.
The day is being marked by a complete shutdown in IIOJK.
Protest marches, rallies and seminars will be held in Pakistan and across the globe.
In Azad Kashmir, protest marches, rallies and seminars will also be held at all the districts and tehsil headquarters to condemn the Indian Army’s invasion on October 27, 1947, and the revocation of the special status of IIOJK by the BJP-led Hindutva government of India.
In the state capital Muzaffarabad, Kashmir Liberation Commission has arranged a protest demonstration followed by a rally.
Similarly, Pasban-e-Hurriyat Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmiri Refugees, other Hurriyat organisations and political and religious parties have arranged anti-India rallies and seminars to observe the Black Day.
President AJK Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry and Prime Minister Chaudhry Anwarul Haq have appealed Kashmiris all over the world to register their protest against India.
ISLAMABAD: After the reduction in the RLNG consumption, Pakistan has formally asked Qatar for the reschedule of five LNG cargoes that are to be imported in the calendar year 2025, and now the country would get those in 2026 under the flexible clause.
“However, authorities are also trying to firm up the plan to shelve import of 13 more LNG cargoes that are to arrive in Pakistan in 2025, or Qatar may halt the export of 13 cargoes to Pakistan,” the official said.
The official added: “The RLNG consumption has now started tumbling by 150 million cubic feet (MMCF) in a month, which means that the 18 LNG cargoes in 2025 would turn the additional ones mainly because of the lower GDP growth in the country and reduced industrial activities.”
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, he disclosed, during his forthcoming visit to Qatar, may take up the issue of rescheduling five LNG cargoes.
The authorities also want Qatar not to send 13 RLNG cargoes in 2025. However, authorities of Sui Northern, Mari gas company, PSO, Sui Southern and PLL have started brainstorming on how to tackle the issue of 13 cargoes, keeping in view the agreements.
Pakistan imports 108 LNG cargoes from Qatar under two GtG agreements. The country, under the terms, imports nine LNG vessels a month (five cargoes a month under 13.37% of the Brent and 4 cargoes under 10.2% of the Brent). One cargo is imported through a term agreement with the ENI. This is how the country imports 10 LNG cargoes a month in toto.
However, under the agreements, the official said, there is no clause under which 13 more cargoes could be halted by Qatar as a supplier or supplier allows Pakistan to sell 13 cargoes in the open market.
“If Qatar sells the LNG cargo destined to reach Pakistan in the open market below the price agreed with Pakistan, the loss would be paid by PSO on every cargo. The authorities concerned, however, hoped that Qatar would agree to shift five LNG cargoes to 2026 that are to arrive in 2025 under the flexible clause.”
To a question, the official said that in the coming winter season, the authorities have completed its plan under which 12 LNG cargoes would be available during the peak winter season each in December 2024 and January 2025.
“We have arranged 10 cargoes from Qatar for the month of December and two from ENI. And for January 2025, Qatar would provide 11 LNG cargoes and ENI 1,” the official said, adding: “We have readjusted the cargoes to meet the peak winter demand as Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) managed to shift its one cargo from ENI to December 2024, which was to arrive in September 2024.”
“Likewise, the authorities managed only six cargoes from Qatar for the current month of November, 2024 against nine cargoes. So one cargo from Qatar has been shifted to December and two to January 2025,” said the official.
ISLAMABAD: Justice Yahya Afridi was sworn in as Pakistan’s 30th chief justice on Saturday, succeeding Justice Qazi Faez Isa as the country’s top judge.
President Asif Ali Zardari administered oath to the newly-appointed top judge in a prestigious ceremony at the Aiwan-e-Sadr. The new CJP will serve the post for a fixed three-year term.
Justice Afridi has succeeded former CJP Isa, who retired and relinquished charge as the top judge yesterday (October 25).
The new top judge is the first to be appointed under Articles 175A(3), 177, and 179 of the Constitution following the 26th Constitutional Amendment.
The oath-taking ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and heads of the tri-services, including Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir.
Moreover, Supreme Court judges, including Justice Athar Minallah and Justice Aisha Malik, former CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, Governor Sardar Saleem Haider, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur and Governor Faisal Karim Kundi, alongside parliamentarians were also in attendance.
Justice Afridi was born in Dera Ismail Khan on 23rd January 1965. He belongs to the Adam Khel section of the Afridi tribe located in the Kohat Frontier Region and is a resident of Village Babari Banda, District Kohat. He belongs to a family steeped in a tradition of public service.
He received his early education at Aitchison College, Lahore. He went on to earn his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Economics from Government College Lahore and later obtained his Masters of Arts degree in Economics from Punjab University, Lahore.
After being awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship, Justice Afridi completed his LLM from Jesus College at the University of Cambridge. He was subsequently selected for a scholarship program for Young Commonwealth Lawyers at the Institute of Legal Studies in London.
He started his private practice in Peshawar and lectured at Khyber Law College, University of Peshawar where he taught International Law, Labour Law and Administrative Law.
He was enrolled as an advocate of the High Court in 1990 and as an advocate of the Supreme Court in 2004. He served as an Assistant Advocate General for the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and as a Federal Counsel for the Government of Pakistan while in practice.
Afridi was elevated to the Bench of the Peshawar High Court as Additional Judge in 2010 and was confirmed as a Judge of the Peshawar High Court on 15th March 2012.
Justice Afridi became the first judge from the Federally Administered Tribal Area to assume the office of the Chief Justice of the Peshawar High Court when he took oath on 30th December 2016. He served in that office until his elevation as a Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 28th June 2018.
Tens of thousands of people were displaced by floods fuelled by a torrential downpour that dumped two months’ worth of rain, or 391.3 millimetres, over just two days in Batangas.
“Many are still trapped on the roofs of their homes and asking for help,” said Andre Dizon, police director for the hard-hit Bicol region.
Over 391mm rainfall recorded in two days
In Laurel, reporters saw roads blocked by felled trees, vehicles half-submerged in mud and homes severely damaged by flash flooding.
“We saw washing machines, cars, home equipment, roofs being swept away,” Mimie Dionela, 56, told AFP.
As Trami departed the Philippines in the early hours, travelling west over the South China Sea, the storm’s death toll was swelling as fresh reports of victims emerged.
In Batangas province, south of Manila, the number of confirmed dead had risen to 43, provincial police chief Jacinto Malinao said.
Laurel and the nearby towns of Talisay and Agoncillo accounted for most of the dead in Batangas, with 16 others missing in Talisay, he added.
“The greatest challenge here really is the thick mud. In our location, the mud is about 10 feet (three metres) high with debris and boulders, Malinao said.
Police in the Bicol region reported 29 deaths, while four other bodies were found elsewhere.
At a press briefing, President Ferdinand Marcos noted the cities of Naga and Legazpi in Bicol had reported “many casualties, but we haven’t been able to get in yet”.
Offices and schools across the main island of Luzon remained shuttered, but storm surge warnings were cancelled along the west coast as Trami flew farther out to sea.
An official tally reported nearly 320,000 people evacuated in the face of flooding.
Germany promised to dramatically boost the number of skilled Indians it permits to work in the country as Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted Chancellor Olaf Scholz in New Delhi on Friday.
The German leader is on his third visit to India since last year, bringing several cabinet ministers for discussions between the leaders of the world’s third- and fifth-largest economies.
His administration agreed to increase the number of visas granted annually to skilled Indian workers to 90,000, up from 20,000.
“The message is that Germany is open for skilled workers,” Scholz said.
Modi hailed the agreement as an economic boon to both countries.
“When India’s dynamics and Germany’s precision meet, when Germany’s engineering and India’s innovation meet… a better future is decided for the Indo-Pacific and the entire world,” he said.
India and Germany first signed a migration agreement two years ago to facilitate mobility for professionals and students.
Berlin has also pledged to make its visa application process less bureaucratic and to improve the recognition of Indian professional qualifications in Germany.
Scholz arrived in India late on Thursday, following a state visit in February 2023 and the G20 summit in New Delhi later that year.
India’s foreign ministry said this week that the partnership between both countries had “deepened” over the years.
Germany and India are defence partners, and naval forces from both sides undertook a “maritime partnership exercise” earlier this week in the Indian Ocean.
The maiden exercise was aimed at “further strengthening the maritime connect between the two nations and interoperability between the navies”, a statement from India’s navy read Thursday.
‘More cooperation’
“We also want to deepen our cooperation on defence and agree to bring our militaries closer together,” Scholz said. “Our overall message is clear: We need more cooperation not less.”
But the two countries diverge over ties with Russia and its war with Ukraine.
While Germany strongly backs Kyiv, Modi this week attended a BRICS summit where he embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In contrast to Germany, Modi’s government has maintained its longstanding ties with Moscow even as it also courts closer security partnerships with its Western allies.
While in New Delhi, Scholz said reports that Russia could soon send North Korean troops to fight in Ukraine were “very worrying”.
“It is serious and, of course, something that escalates the situation further,” he said.
“At the same time, it also shows that the Russian president is in dire straits. He has now allied himself with countries whose behaviour he once strongly criticised.”
Scholz’s visit also covered India’s ambitious programme to scale up production of “green hydrogen”, a clean energy source in demand in Germany as Russian oil and gas supplies have shrunk and Berlin seeks to meet its climate goals.
Representatives of both countries agreed on a bilateral “Green Hydrogen Road Map” on Friday, the details of which have yet to be published.
Scholz and his team are expected to travel to Goa on Saturday to inspect naval vessels before returning to Germany in the evening.
Labour promised at the general election not to increase taxes on working people – but the party did not define who it had in mind.
The governmentis looking at increasing tax on asset sales, such as shares and property, freezing income tax thresholds, and changes to inheritance tax.
The prime minister insists working people will not be hit by these changes – but he has struggled to define who exactly he is seeking to protect from tax rises.
The Conservatives have accused Labour of “reinventing” what counts as a working person, as the Budget approaches.
In an interview during a Commonwealth leaders’ summit, the prime minister was asked whether those who work, but get additional income from assets such as shares or property, would count as working people.
He replied that they “wouldn’t come within my definition” – but warned against making “assumptions” about what that meant for tax policy.
He said he thought of a working person as someone who “goes out and earns their living, usually paid in a sort of monthly cheque” and who can’t “write a cheque to get out of difficulties”.
Speaking afterwards, his spokesman sought to clarify that those with a “small amount of savings” could still be defined as working people.
This could include cash savings, or stocks and shares in a tax-free Individual Savings Accounts (ISA), he suggested.
But ministers have been reluctant to translate these comments into numbers.
The prime minister accepted that his own definition was “broad”.
Those people he had in mind, he added, were those who were “doing alright” but had an “anxiety in the bottom of their stomach” about making ends meet if something unexpected happened to their family.
The issue has taken on a central political importance ahead of next Wednesday’s Budget, Labour’s first since 2010, amid a row over whether the party is sticking to promises it made in its election manifesto.
During a BBC interview back in the UK, Treasury minister James Murray was asked repeatedly to give a more precise answer.
When asked whether someone who owned shares or sold a business could be a working person, he said he would not “get into too many hypotheticals”.
“We’re talking about where people get their income from,” he said, adding ministers wanted to protect people who “get their income from work”.
Minister asked if landlords count as ‘working people’
As well as the broad pledge not to raise taxes for working people, Labour’s manifesto specifically ruled out raising rates of income tax, along with National Insurance and Value Added Tax (VAT).
But ministers have not ruled out continuing to freeze income tax thresholds beyond 2028, a policy they inherited from the Conservatives, dragging more people into higher bands over time as wages rise with inflation.
And they have also not ruled out making employers pay National Insurance on their contributions to workers’ pension pots, which the Conservatives have branded a “tax on work” that will indirectly hit employees.
Labour peer Lord Blunkett, a cabinet minister in the Blair government, said the “logical outcome” of the move was that “employers will pay less”.
He also cautioned that he was unsure of the government’s definition of a working person, adding: “We’ve got to find a different phraseology”.
Other rumoured tax rises include to capital gains tax, which is paid on profits made by selling assets including shares and property other than a main home.
The government is also planning to increase the amount of money it raises in inheritance tax, which is paid after around 4% of deaths.
Multiple changes to the tax, which currently includes several exemptions and reliefs, are under consideration.
The most recent official statistics show that in 2020, 11% of British households held shares in UK companies, with 12% holding stocks and shares ISAs.
According to government data from 2021, just under a third of landlords in England were full-time employees, with 1 in 10 employed part-time.
Around 15% were self-employed, whilst over third (35%) were retired.
RAWALPINDI: The security forces on the night between October 23 and 24 eliminated nine terrorists — or “khawarij” — including two suicide bombers and a ring leader in an intelligence-based operation (IBO) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bajaur district.
During the operation, high-value target (HVT) and terrorist ring leader Said Muhammad alias “Qureshi Ustad” was also killed following an intense exchange of fire with the troops, said the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on Thursday.
With the sanitisation operation underway to eliminate any further militants in the area, the security forces also recovered large quantities of weapons, ammunition, and explosives from the terrorists.
The militants, the military’s media wing added, remained actively involved in numerous terrorist activities against the security forces as well as innocent civilians.
The ISPR further reaffirmed the security forces’ resolve to wipe out the menace of terrorism from the country.
Last week, at least five militants were arrested in an IBO in Balochsitan’s Pishin district. Whereas two terrorists were killed in a separate IBO in the province’s Zhob district.
The IBOs are part of the concerted efforts by the government, security forces and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to tackle the menace of terrorism which has witnessed an increase in recent months.
As per the third quarterly report (Q3) issued by the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), the total fatalities from three quarters of this year have surpassed the total fatalities recorded for the entire of 2023 with 1,534 deaths compared to last year’s 1,523.
A total of 722 people were killed, including civilians, security personnel, and outlaws, while 615 others were wounded in as many as 328 incidents recorded during the third quarter.
Balochistan and KP have been at the forefront of the country’s war against terror and have faced the brunt of terror attacks.
