Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan said on Monday that negotiations between the Afghan government and the insurgent Taliban were expected to begin soon but that the release of 5,000 prisoners and a reduction of violence were the final hurdles.

At least seven people including four attackers died after gunmen attacked Karachi’s stock exchange building on Monday morning.

Prime Minister Imran Khan was criticized for using a term of veneration in Islam when referring to the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

A court in Pakistan Friday convicted and sentenced five men for being members of al-Qaida and supporting terrorism.

Pakistan remains a “safe haven” for a host of regional terror groups, including the Afghan Taliban and its integral subgroup, the Al Qaeda linked Haqqani Network, according the the State Department’s newly released Country Reports on Terrorism 2019.

Pakistani police said Tuesday their counter-terrorism forces, acting on intelligence, raided a suspected militant hideout in the country’s northwest, triggering an intense shootout in which four suspects were killed.

U.S. envoy for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has met with leaders of the Taliban in Qatar to review the implementation of a peace deal with the Islamist insurgency aimed at ending nearly two decades of Afghan conflict.

A major intelligence-based operation is ongoing against militants hiding near Pakistan’s border with Iran in the southwestern Balochistan province, Pakistani intelligence officials and local witnesses said, in the latest attempt to combat violence on the 900-km shared frontier.

On May 19, 2020, six Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers were killed when unidentified militants targeted their vehicle using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the Mach District of Balochistan on May 19, 2020. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack.

Thousands of Pakistanis, including fighters from Pakistani proxies, continue to support the Taliban’s jihad against the Afghan government, according to a new report by a United Nations monitoring team. The report highlighted Pakistan’s double game of claiming to fight terrorism while backing terror groups that further its foreign policy goals.