AFP Asia

Pakistani separatist militants claimed on Saturday an attack on a highway in a volatile southwestern province that killed 18 paramilitaries and seriously wounded three others.The attack was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army, a group behind rising violence in Balochistan province that borders Afghanistan and Iran.A vehicle carrying unarmed border troops “came under gunfire from 70 to 80 armed assailants who had blocked the road”, a police official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.The official said 17 troops were killed, along with another who came to their aid in the overnight attack on Friday near Mangochar, a city close to the Afghan border. The military said 18 paramilitaries were killed as they responded to militants who “attempted to establish roadblocks”, while 12 attackers were killed. The BLA said in a statement it had killed 17 troops and had carried out multiple “operations”.Attacks have increased in Balochistan province in recent months, often against security forces.The BLA frequently claims deadly attacks against security forces or Pakistanis from other provinces, notably Punjabis in Balochistan.The group has also targeted energy projects with foreign financing — most notably from China — accusing outsiders of exploiting the resource-rich region while excluding residents in the poorest part of Pakistan.In November, the BLA claimed responsibility for a bombing at Quetta’s main railway station that killed 26 people, including 14 soldiers.The group also said it was behind coordinated attacks by dozens of assailants in August that killed at least 39 people, one of the highest tolls in the region.Violence has surged in Pakistan’s border regions since the Afghan Taliban returned to power in Kabul in 2021.Pakistan has accused the Taliban government of failing to rout out militants who launch attacks from Afghan soil, a charge it denies.More than 1,600 people were killed in attacks in 2024 — the deadliest year in almost a decade — including 685 civil and military security forces, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based analysis group.

Sri Lanka suffered their heaviest defeat in Test cricket history on Saturday as Australia flexed their muscles to take a 1-0 lead in the two-match series with a crushing victory by an innings and 242 runs. The contest was wrapped up before tea on day four, with rookie left-arm spinner Matthew Kuhnemann’s match-winning spell delivering him career-best figures of 9-149 over both innings. “We were put under pressure,” Sri Lanka skipper Dhananjaya de Silva said afterwards. “The batters should have put up a better show.”Kuhnemann underwent surgery only two weeks ago on a broken right thumb sustained during the Big Bash League and battled through the match in pain, requiring constant medical attention.He was well-supported by the ever-dependable Nathan Lyon, who spun a web around the Sri Lankan batters to finish with seven match wickets.Sri Lanka’s heaviest defeat before Saturday was in Nagpur in 2017, when India hammered them by an innings and 239.Sri Lanka resumed on 136 for five overnight but their first innings folded for 165, losing their last five wickets for a mere nine runs. Put straight back in to bat chasing 489, they lost three wickets before lunch and then capitulated in the second session — a humiliating finish for a team once renowned for its prowess on turning tracks.Dinesh Chandimal had waged a lonely battle in the first innings to top-score with 72 and, with Angelo Mathews, stitched together one of only two 50-plus partnerships in the second. However, he was sent back for 31 on the last ball before lunch when he gloved Lyon to Travis Head at short leg.Oshada Fernando failed to make an impact in his return to the side, undone by a sharp inswinger from Mitchell Starc that trapped him plumb in front for six to go with his first innings seven.Former skipper Dimuth Karunaratne’s horror run with the bat continued after an avoidable dismissal for nought by Todd Murphy. – ‘Tough place to play’ -Rain forced an early lunch on day three before washing out the final two sessions. Australia declared on 654-6 late on the second day after opener Usman Khawaja’s career-best 232.”Galle is a tough place to play cricket and we are very happy with this win,” Khawaja said. “I’ve played a lot of cricket in Sri Lanka, this being my fifth tour. I’ve made lot of mistakes before. I guess all that experience came in handy in this game.”Stand-in skipper Steve Smith also had a game to remember, becoming only the fourth Australian to breach the 10,000-run mark in Test cricket on the first ball he faced. He finished his innings with a masterful 141, while wicketkeeper Josh Inglis hit a century on debut.Galle will host the second and final match of the series next week before a two-match ODI series in Colombo. 

Old rivalries between India and Pakistan are driving a shift in regional ties, with New Delhi courting Afghanistan’s Taliban while Islamabad befriends the new leaders of post-revolutionary Bangladesh.Diplomatic dynamics in South Asia are rooted in long-running distrust between the region’s two most populous nations.Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan — carved out of the subcontinent at the chaotic end of British colonial rule in 1947 — have fought multiple wars and remain bitter foes.The rivalry shows no sign of abating, with New Delhi denying in January it had launched covert operations to kill anti-Indian militants on Pakistani soil.”You can’t have snakes in your backyard and expect them to only bite your neighbours,” Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal told reporters in dismissing the allegations.Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have also worsened since the Taliban returned to power in Kabul nearly four years ago.Islamabad has accused Taliban authorities of failing to rein in militants they say are using Afghan territory to stage attacks that have killed thousands of Pakistani security personnel.Pakistan launched deadly air strikes in Afghanistan border regions in December, with subsequent cross-border exchanges of fire.The Taliban’s austere interpretation of Islamic law seems at first glance an unlikely pairing for the Hindu nationalism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but India has nonetheless moved to exploit the opportunity.”India has been pursuing this path quite consistently for quite some time,” international relations professor Hassan Abbas of the National Defense University in Washington told AFP.”They don’t want the Taliban to give space to any group that is going to ultimately be a bigger threat to India,” he said, adding that the prospect of “annoying Pakistan” was also appealing for New Delhi.- ‘Want to do more’ -India’s top career diplomat, Vikram Misri, met with Taliban foreign minister Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi in Dubai in January.Jaiswal described the meeting as the “highest level of engagement” yet, adding that New Delhi was determined to “strengthen our longstanding relationship with the people of Afghanistan”.Muttaqi had in turn “expressed his hope for the expansion of relations”, a spokesman for his ministry said.Jaiswal said it was agreed at the meeting to “promote the use” of India’s $370 million development of Iran’s Chabahar container port “for supporting trade and commercial activities” to landlocked Afghanistan.Chabahar is just west of Pakistan’s Gwadar port, which is considered a cornerstone of the infrastructure expansion of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Pakistan.India has long been wary of China’s growing regional clout and the world’s two most populous countries compete for influence in South Asia, despite a recent diplomatic thaw. The Times of India said in an editorial after the Dubai meeting that New Delhi’s “quiet yet deliberate engagement” with the Taliban was reshaping strategic regional ties.”Despite not officially recognising the Taliban government, India understands the importance of maintaining a foothold in Afghanistan,” the newspaper wrote.”The move also aligns with India’s broader regional strategy, which seeks to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its influence in neighbouring Pakistan,” it said.- ‘Enemy of my enemy’ -At the same time, old enemies Pakistan and Bangladesh now speak of “friendly” ties.Pakistan and Bangladesh were once one nation but split in a brutal 1971 war, with Bangladesh then drawing closer to India.However, long-time Bangladeshi premier Sheikh Hasina was ousted in an August 2024 revolution, fleeing by helicopter to her old ally India, where she has defied Dhaka’s extradition requests to face charges including mass murder.Relations between India and Bangladesh’s new government have been frosty since then, allowing Islamabad and Dhaka to slowly rebuild ties.The first cargo ship in decades to sail directly from Pakistan to Bangladesh successfully unloaded its containers in the port of Chittagong in November.Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus also met with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in December, saying he had “agreed to strengthen relations”.Top Bangladeshi army commanders later visited Pakistan, discussing training programmes and praising the “friendly relationship” between the nations.Dhaka University professor Amena Mohsin told AFP that the sudden closeness reflected one of the oldest dictums in international diplomacy.”The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” she said.burs-pjm-gle/pbt/mtp

Blazing fifties from Hardik Pandya and Shivam Dube helped India recover from early setbacks to reach 181-9 in the fourth T20 international against England on Friday.India, who lost the previous game but lead the five-match series 2-1, tumbled to 79-5 after England speedster Saqib Mahmood rattled them with three wickets in one over in Pune.However, left-hander Dube hit back with 53 and Pandya smashed the same score, putting on 87 runs for the sixth wicket in a partnership littered with fours and sixes.England elected to bowl first and Mahmood, who was added in place of Mark Wood, made an instant impact when he had Sanju Samson caught for 12 with his first ball.He struck again with the wicket of Tilak Varma to be on a hat-trick, although Indian skipper Suryakumar Yadav managed to avoid it. Yadav, however, lasted only four balls before being dismissed by Mahmood for a duck.Rinku Singh, who made 30, and Abhishek Sharma, with 29, both attempted to counter-attack with a flurry of boundaries but leg-spinner Adil Rashid broke through.Abhishek slog-swept a looping and slow delivery from outside-off to be caught at deep mid-wicket by Jacob Bethell, who came in for Jamie Smith as the second change in the England team.Brydon Carse took down Rinku but Dube, who was dropped on zero by skipper Jos Buttler at slip, and Pandya took on the Indian attack.Pandya smashed four fours and four sixes in his 30-ball blitz before being dismissed by Jamie Overton and Dube was run out on the final ball.

Indian officials downplayed a deadly stampede at the world’s largest religious festival because they wanted to protect the public image of a potential successor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, analysts and witnesses have said.Deadly incidents are regrettably common at public gatherings in the world’s most populous country, where swarming crowds and poor safety standards often combine with lethal consequences. Where this week differed from past stampedes was a concerted effort by authorities to understate its severity — or deny outright that it happened.Officials insisted for hours that no one was seriously injured, despite graphic television footage from the scene, that the situation was under control, and that suggestions to the contrary amounted to rumour-mongering.They waited for almost a day before confirming that at least 30 people had been killed in the chaotic pre-dawn crowd surge at a festival that has drawn tens of millions of pilgrims from around India.”They underplayed it. They said it was a ‘stampede-like situation’. What does that mean? It is either a stampede or it is not,” Hartosh Singh Bal, executive editor of Indian news magazine Caravan, told AFP.”Officials on the ground in India just don’t do things on their own,” he said. “Everything happens according to orders from the top.”Wednesday’s stampede took place at the Kumbh Mela, a 12-yearly festival of ritual bathing that has been held in the northern city of Prayagraj for more than a millennium. Responsibility for its staging — and the unfathomable numbers of devotees who visit over its six-week duration — this year fell on officials in Uttar Pradesh, a state home to more people than Brazil.Uttar Pradesh is run by chief minister Yogi Adityanath, 52, a firebrand former monk who has become one of the leading figures in Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and is seen as a potential future prime minister. Adityanath had taken steps to make the Kumbh Mela a sign of the success of his stewardship, with billboards showing the smiling saffron robe-clad leader a ubiquitous feature of the festival.The Indian Express newspaper reported last month that his government had recruited “digital warriors” — a coterie of social media influencers — to publicise the good work of police at the festival and combat “fake news”. New Delhi-based writer and analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said Adityanath’s political appeal, like Modi’s, rested on being seen as a custodian of the Hindu faith. “The success of Kumbh without any blemish was very important,” he said. “But now, there is a blemish.”- ‘There was no stampede’ -Authorities scrambled to put their own spin on events as news of a pre-dawn stampede spread on Wednesday.”There was no stampede. It was just overcrowding, due to which some devotees got injured,” police officer Rajesh Dwivedi told one briefing nearly 12 hours after the fatal crush.Another officer insisted to media later that afternoon that no one had been seriously injured at all.Adityanath himself said the situation was under control and told the public “not to believe any kind of rumours”.The festival’s official communications team continued to give regular updates on the number of pilgrims participating in bathing rituals but ignored requests for information about how many had been caught in the stampede.Police finally confirmed that 30 people had been killed and dozens more injured after sunset, when the day’s rituals were drawing to an end.The long information blackout fuelled scepticism that it reflected the true extent of the disaster, with several media outlets suggesting the toll was higher.- ‘Heads should obviously roll’ -The police announcement of the death toll was accompanied by an official statement praising officers for acting quickly to prevent the situation from spiralling out of control.”Eyewitnesses praised the swift action… their timely intervention prevented a major disaster”, the statement said.The official account has been vehemently contradicted by witnesses.”It took an hour and a half for police to come and get her body,” Tarun Bose, whose relative was trampled to death on Wednesday, told AFP. “There were no police officers around during the accident.”Ashish Tripathi, a resident of Prayagraj, said it was clear festival organisers had failed in their duties to anticipate crowd numbers.”Heads should obviously roll for this tragedy,” he told AFP.Tripathi said he felt sorry for those killed in the stampede who, like millions of other Hindu faithful, had travelled to bathe in the rivers running by the city in the belief it would free them from the cosmic cycles of death and rebirth.”Some people say that dying here in Prayagraj gives you salvation,” he said. “Not like this.” 

Incessant afternoon rain forced an early end to day three of the first Test between Australia and Sri Lanka on Friday, with the visitors leading by 518 and former home skipper Dinesh Chandimal waging a lone battle on 63.Sri Lanka were 136-5 by lunch in Galle, with wicketkeeper Kusal Mendis also at the crease on 10, after losing two more wickets from their overnight 44-3.The break was called early and players were kept off the pitch through the afternoon, with officials calling an end 90 minutes before the scheduled finish.Kamindu Mendis departed for 15 after an edge to the keeper off Mitchell Starc, further denting the Bradman-like average he maintained at the start of his Test comeback last year. Captain Dhananjaya de Silva looked comfortable before rushing down the track to Matthew Kuhnemann and missing the ball completely, gifting Alex Carey a regulation stumping and leaving for 22.Left-arm speedster Starc expertly created rough patches outside the off stump, while Nathan Lyon relentlessly probed away from the other end. Chandimal, who was promoted to the crucial number three position last year and has since averaged over 50, stood firm despite the uphill battle to avoid the follow-on. Australia declared on 654-6 late on the second day after opener Usman Khawaja’s career-best 232.The opening day saw stand-in skipper Steve Smith join the elite club of 10,000 career Test run-makers, the fifteenth player and fourth Australian to reach the milestone.Picturesque Galle will also host the second and final match of the series next week before a two-match ODI series in Colombo. 

Sri Lanka’s Dinesh Chandimal was waging a lone battle on 63 with Australia ahead by 518 runs and tightening their grip on the first Test before rain forced early lunch Friday.The hosts were 136-5 by the first break on day three in Galle with wicketkeeper Kusal Mendis also at the crease on 10 after losing two more wickets overnight. Kamindu Mendis departed for 15 after an edge to the keeper off Mitchell Starc, further denting the Bradman-like average he maintained at the start of his Test comeback last year. Captain Dhananjaya de Silva looked comfortable in his brief stay before rushing down the track to Matthew Kuhnemann and missing the ball completely, gifting Alex Carey a regulation stumping and leaving for 22.Left-arm speedster Starc expertly created rough patches outside the off-stump while Nathan Lyon relentlessly probed away from the other end. Chandimal, who was promoted to the crucial number three position last year and has averaged over 50 since, stood firm and bunkered in for an uphill battle in avoiding the follow-on. Australia declared on 654-6 late on the second day after opener Usman Khawaja’s career-best 232.The opening day saw stand-in skipper Steve Smith join the elite club of 10,000 career Test run-makers, the fifteenth player and fourth Aussie to the milestone.Picturesque Galle will also host the second and final match of the series next week before a two-match ODI series in Colombo. 

Superstar Indian cricketer Virat Kohli flopped on his first domestic cricket match in more than a decade Friday to the dismay of thousands who turned out to see him play.International stars were ordered by India’s cricket board to return to domestic matches in a bid to lift their form following a soul-searching 3-1 series defeat in Australia.Kohli, 36, and other team titans have made regular appearances in the lucrative Indian Premier League (IPL), but this week marked his return to the Ranji Trophy — the country’s premier red-ball tournament — after a 12-year absence. He strode in to bat for home team Delhi on day two of their match against Railways to roars and chants of his name from the stands. After a circumspect start and a few play-and-misses on the off-side, Kohli drove fast bowler Himanshu Sangwan for a rasping straight drive to bring the crowd to its feet.But the joy was shortlived as the next ball went straight through his defence and the off-stump went cartwheeling with him on six. Dejected fans began making their way to the exit even as Kohli was walking back to the pavilion, and the stadium numbers soon dwindled from thousands to less than a few hundred.India skipper Rohit Sharma had also faltered on his return to Ranji cricket last week when he scored just three off 19 balls for Mumbai.Rohit and fellow opener Yashasvi Jaiswal opted out of this week’s match.Both Kohli and Rohit have faced severe scrutiny over their recent batting struggles in Australia, with questions raised on their future in Test cricket.Kohli scored an unbeaten century in the first Test but his other eight innings in the series produced just 90 runs in total.Rohit, 37, who missed the only India win of the series in the first Test because of the birth of his second child, managed 31 runs in three matches.India’s next Test assignment will be their tour to England for five matches starting in June.

Throngs of devotees at the world’s biggest religious gathering bathed in Indian rivers on Thursday, undeterred by a stampede a day earlier that killed at least 30 people.The Kumbh Mela attracts tens of millions of Hindu faithful every 12 years to the northern city of Prayagraj, but has a record of deadly crowd incidents. Wednesday’s pre-dawn disaster, which saw a surging crowd spill out of a police cordon and trample bystanders, prompted some spooked pilgrims to leave the festival. But many more were still arriving in the stampede’s aftermath to participate in what they said was a matter of religious obligation.”We’ve obviously heard about the stampede,” said 21-year-old Naveen Pradhan, who arrived at the festival with his family hours after the disaster. “But this is a holy thing, a religious thing, something we should do as Hindus, and my family wouldn’t have missed this no matter what,” he told AFP.The six-week Kumbh Mela is the single biggest milestone on the Hindu religious calendar, and Wednesday marked one of the holiest days of the festival, coinciding with an alignment of the Solar System’s planets. Despite the early morning disaster, saffron-clad holy men continued with the day’s rituals, leading millions into a sin-cleansing dip by the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers.More than 10 million others immersed themselves in the waters between midnight and midday on Thursday, according to organisers.”The journey was challenging — the trains were packed, the train stations were packed,” pharmacist Padmabati Dam told AFP.”We were tired after such a long journey but as soon as we took a dip in the river we just felt so fresh and happy. It was as if all that inconvenience was really worth it.” – ‘Wanted to underplay it’ -The Kumbh Mela is rooted in a mythological Hindu battle between deities and demons for control of a pitcher containing the nectar of immortality. Organisers have likened the scale of this year’s festival to a temporary country, forecasting up to 400 million pilgrims would visit before the final day on February 26. Authorities have been criticised for repeatedly downplaying the stampede over the course of the day before finally issuing a statement praising their response to the accident. Police waited nearly 18 hours after Wednesday’s stampede to give an official death toll, an apparent effort to minimise disruption to the events. “Information is the first thing that must flow in such a circumstance, but that is exactly what did not happen,” New Delhi-based writer and analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay told AFP.”They wanted to underplay it,” he added. “It was basically them saying too bad it happened, but it wasn’t their fault.”- ‘Probe the situation’ -Even before the tragedy, attendees were fuming over what they said was poor crowd management.Reserved pathways and cordoned-off areas for eminent attendees have been a source of vehement complaints.Those grievances were picked up by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, who blamed the disaster on poor crowd control that had prioritised the comfort of distinguished visitors.The Uttar Pradesh state government, responsible for overseeing the festival, ordered an overhaul of crowd management on Thursday, including a ban on VIP passes and vehicle traffic, local media reported.”We will probe the situation,” retired judge Harsh Kumar, appointed to head a government investigation into the stampede, told reporters. “We will review in a way that this is not repeated.”Police this year installed hundreds of cameras at the festival site and on roads leading to the sprawling encampment, mounted on poles and a fleet of overhead drones. The surveillance network feeds into an artificial intelligence system at a command and control centre meant to alert staff if sections of the crowd get so concentrated that they pose a safety threat. Previous Kumbh Mela festivals have also seen deadly crowd incidents.More than 400 people died after they were trampled or drowned on a single day of the festival in 1954, one of the largest tolls in a crowd-related disaster globally.Another 36 people were crushed to death in 2013, the last time the festival was staged in Prayagraj.

Hindu pilgrim Parvati Gupta braved jostling crowds to be at the world’s largest religious festival in India but will leave with injuries that will keep her bedridden for months.The 45-year-old travelled alongside tens of millions of faithful from around the country to be at the Kumbh Mela, a 12-yearly gathering of sin-cleansing ritual bathing in sacred rivers. Rather than exulting in the holy rites she performed in the waters in the dead of the night, Parvati was on Thursday lying in hospital, wincing in pain and unable to speak.Her family had already resolved to depart the festival and were on the move when a surging crowd spilled over police cordons, knocking her to the ground, trampling her and breaking her leg.”The atmosphere was festive but… just when we were about to leave we lost our balance with all the pushing and shoving,” relative Anita Gupta, keeping vigil by Parvati’s bedside, told AFP.Both women had travelled to the Kumbh Mela on a train overflowing with pilgrims, arriving in the northern city of Prayagraj hours after schedule and forced to sleep in the open after they were unable to find a room.Anita credited a group of men for saving them from death after they formed a protective cordon around the pair when the throng began to swell. But her account of those moments, matched by others in the ward, suggested serious safety lapses and a hapless official response to a stampede that killed at least 30 people.Anita said that several routes leading from the riverside had been blocked by police, causing the chaos and overcrowding that led to the accident.Gauri Sharma, another woman wounded in the crush, said blame rested squarely on the shoulders of festival organisers. “Authorities had closed off some routes, leaving us stuck in one place,” she told AFP. “Then the entire crowd piled up, with people pushing and pressing against each other.”- ‘Attained salvation’ -Wednesday marked one of the holiest days in the six-week Kumbh Mela, and authorities seemed determined not to let the deadly stampede dampen festivities. Millions of people have participated in sacred bathing rituals as normal and periodic police briefings on Wednesday refused to confirm deaths while downplaying the severity of the accident. “There was no stampede. It was just overcrowding due to which some devotees got injured,” police officer Rajesh Dwivedi said at one briefing nearly 12 hours after the fatal crush. An official statement issued that evening credited police at the scene for quickly bringing the situation under control and ambulances for swiftly attending to the injured.”Eyewitnesses praised the swift action” of police, saying that “their timely intervention prevented a major disaster”, the statement said.Police finally confirmed that 30 people had been killed and dozens more injured nearly 18 hours after the stampede, once the sun had set and the day’s bathing was drawing to an end.Several present at the stampede said they believed the police toll was likely understated. “I am sure that more people died,” Anita said. Many were also quick to dismiss the official account of the response to the accident. “Why couldn’t they have prepared better?” Prayagraj resident Rahul Shukla told AFP.”Everyone knew well in advance that the festival would host more than 100 million people.”The 27-year-old said he was grieved by the deaths.But, he added, “those who died at such a holy spot must have immediately attained salvation”.