News stories by Ashfaq Yusufzai, page 16

In their efforts to kill and injure more people as part of a terror campaign in northern Pakistan, the Taliban militia have resorted to lacing bombs with toxic chemicals that leave survivors with complicated wounds.

The forests of northwestern Pakistan have become the latest victim of the Taliban’s increasingly desperate quest for resources to sustain and fund its military programme.

Suicide bombing is down, bomb attacks are fewer, but the Taliban are keeping up attacks on girls’ schools. In retaliation, a growing number of girls are going for school education — without school buildings.

The Taliban have destroyed schools, bombed music shops and carried out gruesome executions in Pakistan’s territories bordering Afghanistan. But what they may never be forgiven for is the destruction of ancient shrines where revered Sufi mystics are interred.

As Islamabad and Washington wrangle over responsibility for the Nov. 26 cross-border airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani troops, families of the dead soldiers are demanding revenge on the United States.

Religious and political forces in Northern Pakistan, which hitherto drew strength from their association with the Taliban have begun to distance themselves from the militants, as the latter’s legitimacy plummets in the border regions.

A much-needed DNA laboratory is to be set up at the Forensic Science Department of the Khyber Medical College in Peshawar, capital of the violence- battered Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region in Pakistan.

'Enough is enough. Pakistan should respond aggressively to these unprovoked and unwarranted NATO air strikes,' says local shopkeeper Muhammad Omar. Public anger is boiling over as the Pakistani government takes tough action to cut supplies and other support to NATO forces in Afghanistan.

An outbreak of sports fever has gripped the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Northern Pakistan, as increasing numbers of civilians and government officials latch on to team sports as their only armour against creeping militancy in the border region.

Pakistani pilgrims travelling to Mecca for the current Haj season have one prayer on their lips — to be delivered from the terror that the Taliban have unleashed on their country.