Pakistan condemns Israel for blocking Gaza aid in Ramadan, says move could imperil ceasefire

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai on Thursday expressed nostalgia while reminiscing about her childhood memories during her return to her hometown in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Shangla district, her first visit since being shot in the head by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) targeted Yousafzai when she was 15 years old and returning from school. The attack was in retaliation for her open advocacy of women’s right to education at a time when her district had fallen under TTP control, with the militant group enforcing strict restrictions on women’s mobility and education.
Yousafzai had recently visited Pakistan in January as a speaker at the global summit on girls’ education in the Islamic world, which brought together representatives from Muslim-majority countries where millions of girls remain out of school. However, she was unable to visit her hometown during that trip.
“As a child, I spent every holiday in Shangla, Pakistan, playing by the river and sharing meals with my extended family,” she said in a post on X.
“It was such a joy for me to return there today — after 13 long years — to be surrounded by the mountains, dip my hands in the cold river and laugh with my beloved cousins.”

She said her hometown held a “dear place” in her heart and expressed hope to return “again and again,” adding that she prayed for peace in “every corner of Pakistan.”
She also extended condolences to the victims and families of the militant attack at a military cantonment in Bannu this week, in which five Pakistan Army soldiers, 13 civilians and 16 militants were killed.
AFP reported that the area was sealed off to provide security for her visit, which took place on Wednesday and included a stop at local education projects backed by her Malala Fund.
“Her visit was kept highly secret to avoid any untoward incidents,” AFP quoted a senior administration official as saying, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“Even the locals were unaware of her plans to visit.”
Local media reported that Yousafzai also reunited with her family in Barkana and visited her ancestral graveyard during the three-hour trip.
Yousafzai gained global recognition after the 2012 attack, when she was evacuated to the United Kingdom for treatment. She later became a prominent advocate for girls’ education and, at the age of 17, became the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Her first visit to Pakistan after being shot was in 2018. She returned again in 2022 to visit flood-affected areas in the country.
This marked her third visit to Pakistan since leaving in 2012. She has been living in the UK since then. 

ALEXANDRIA, United States: A Daesh operative who allegedly helped carry out the 2021 suicide bombing outside Kabul airport during the chaotic US military withdrawal from Afghanistan appeared in a Virginia court Wednesday.
Mohammad Sharifullah has confessed to scouting out the route to the airport, where the suicide bomber later detonated his device among packed crowds trying to flee days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul, the Justice Department said.
The blast at the Abbey Gate killed at least 170 Afghans as well as 13 US troops who were securing the airport’s perimeter.
Sharifullah appeared in a court in Alexandria, near the US capital Washington, wearing light blue prison garb and a black face mask. He was officially appointed a public defender and provided with an interpreter.
He did not enter a plea. His next appearance will be in the same courthouse on Monday, and he will stay in custody until then, the judge said.
Sharifullah — who the US says also goes by the name Jafar and is a member of Daesh’s Khorasan branch in Afghanistan and Pakistan — was detained by Pakistani authorities and brought to the United States.
President Donald Trump triumphantly announced his arrest Tuesday in an address to Congress, calling him “the top terrorist responsible for that atrocity.”
Daesh militants gave Sharifullah a cellphone and a SIM card and told him to check the route to the airport, according to the Justice Department’s affidavit in the case.
When he gave it the all-clear, they told him to leave the area, it said.
“Later that same day, Sharifullah learned of the attack at HKIA [Hamid Karzai International Airport] described above and recognized the alleged bomber as an Daesh-K operative he had known while incarcerated,” the affidavit said, using an alternative acronym for the group.
Sharifullah is charged with “providing and conspiring to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death.”
Trump thanked Islamabad “for helping arrest this monster.”
“This evil Daesh-K terrorist orchestrated the brutal murder of 13 heroic Marines,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Sharifullah also admitted to involvement in several other attacks, the Justice Department said, including the March 2024 Moscow Crocus City Hall attack, in which he said “he had shared instructions on how to use AK-style rifles and other weapons to would-be attackers” by video.
The United States withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, ending a chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans who had rushed to Kabul’s airport in the hope of boarding a flight out of the country.
Images of crowds storming the airport, climbing onto aircraft as they took off — and some clinging to a departing US military cargo plane as it rolled down the runway — aired on news bulletins around the world.
In 2023, the White House announced that a Daesh official involved in plotting the airport attack had been killed in an operation by Afghanistan’s new Taliban government.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif thanked Trump for acknowledging his country’s role in counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan, and promised to “continue to partner closely with the United States” in a post on X.
Pakistan’s strategic importance has waned since the US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, which has seen violence rebound in the border regions.
Tensions between the neighboring countries have soared, with Islamabad accusing Kabul of failing to root out militants sheltering on Afghan soil who launch attacks on Pakistan.
The Taliban government denies the charges and in a statement said Sharifullah’s arrest “is proof” that Daesh hideouts are on Pakistani soil.
Daesh, which has claimed several recent attacks in Afghanistan, has staged a growing number of bloody international assaults, including killing more than 90 people in an Iranian bombing last year.
Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute director at the Wilson Center, said on X that Pakistan was trying to “leverage US concerns about terror in Afghanistan and pitch a renewed security partnership.”