QUETTA: A bomb blast near a girls’ high school in Mastung, Balochistan, claimed the lives of nine people, including six schoolchildren, a police officer, and two passers-by. Thirty others were injured. The explosive device, planted on a motorcycle, exploded with great force, damaging several cars. Following the blast, eleven of the injured were shifted to the Trauma Centre at Quetta’s Civil Hospital, where many were reported in critical condition. Police, local authorities, Bomb Disposal
Child Rights in Focus
LAHORE: An accused on 01-November-2024 assaulted a teenage girl in the Shad Bagh area. According to Shad Bagh police, accused Rohit alias Chitta barged into the house of a 17-year-old girl with his accomplices and assaulted her, and took away 1.5 tola gold jewellery and Rs200,000. The police registered the case and arrested the accused. According to police sources, both the accused and the victim belong to the Christian community and are acquainted with
KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has observed that the enactment of the Sindh Medico Legal Act, 2023 was a progressive step, but it required implementation through rule-making and appointments. The SHC directed a committee, headed by the Sindh chief secretary, to ensure compliance with the law, frame rules within six weeks and approve the schedule of new expenditures (SNEs) for appointment of police surgeons and medico-legal officers (MLOs). A two-bench, comprising Justice Salahuddin
CHINIOT: Saddar police have booked six persons, including two women, for the abduction and gang-rape of a minor girl at a brothel they were allegedly running in a house near Jaman Colony, Lahore Road, Chiniot, arresting the two nominated ones. The suspects, four of them, including a woman, unidentified, under sections 364-A, 375-A, 371-A, 372-B of the Pakistan Penal Code and Section 3 of the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons Act 2018 on the
MUZAFFARABAD: Designed to foster the growth of the younger generation and address future challenges, Azad Jammu and Kashmir’s (AJK) Education Policy 2024-2040 will soon be launched in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). This was announced by Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Deevan Ali Khan Chughtai at a press conference held along with Secretary Razaq Ahmed Nadeem and other officials to share the department’s two-year performance. Mr Chughtai noted that after
INSTABILITY continues to haunt Balochistan, as Friday morning’s bombing in Mastung has shown. At least nine fatalities have been confirmed — mostly children — while at the time of writing no group had claimed responsibility for this atrocity. Considering Balochistan’s complex vortex of violence, both separatist militants or religiously inspired insurgents could be behind the act of terrorism, though initial impressions suggest the latter may be responsible. The bombing occurred near a hospital and
QUETTA: Civil society leaders and social activists have called on the government to take concrete steps to improve nutrition for malnourished children and ensure policies that support farmers who provide healthy food to communities. Speaking at a seminar organised by Hope Balochistan, in collaboration with Welthungerhilfe, a non-governmental organisation in Germany, to mark the World Food Day on 30th Oct, they said that not only the government, but members of civil society should also
ISLAMABAD: In light of 43 polio cases reported across the country so far this year, the federal and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments met on 31st October to devise a strategy for eradicating the virus responsible for the crippling disease. Emphasising accountability, the meeting decided to have a zero-tolerance policy against fake finger marking, with strict measures to address any violations. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS), the joint campaign
Poverty, cultural norms continue to henna stain the hands of female children way before their age of consent KARACHI.Although the national obsession with female matrimony is enough to pressurize even elite parents to expedite their search for a son-in-law, for low-income families, marrying off a teenage daughter means having one less mouth to feed. Therefore, child marriages have emerged as a reprehensible yet critical survival strategy for the indigenous communities in rural Sindh. In
Residents have set up a temporary school with volunteer teachers RAWALPINDI: Families in Sumbul Syedan village, Murree, have withdrawn their daughters from schools recently handed over to NGOs, opting instead to educate them in makeshift tent schools. Unhappy with the former Government Primary Girls School’s privatisation, residents set up a temporary school with volunteer teachers in a tented open area to avoid sending their daughters back to the NGO-operated institution. A resident, Syed Zafar
ISLAMABAD: Around 20-25 percent of children in Pakistan never receive even a single drop of their mother’s milk, primarily due to misconceptions and a lack of awareness among women and their families, who often consider breast milk to be either less nutritious or even harmful, leading child health and nutrition expert Prof. Zulfiqar Bhutta said citing the National Nutritional Survey 2018. “Besides poverty, lack of awareness is a major driver of undernutrition in many
KARACHI: The media monitoring organisation Uks Research Resource Centre hosted a webinar on ‘SafeWords: Combating Sexist Abuse in Urdu and Punjabi’ in collaboration with WACC to showcase the findings and achievements of their year-long project about sexist and abuse in Urdu and Punjabi on 31st October. Speaking about the project, the director of Uks said that they started a 365-day campaign ‘#pehlaysochophirbolo’ or ‘#thinkbeforeyouspeak’ where they undertook several activities for collecting data on the