Torrential rains and raging floods have swept away entire villages. Train carrying 394 tons of aid leaves from Ankara: Turkiye's second "Kindness Train" set off for Pakistan with aid for the victims of catastrophic floods which have submerged one-third of the South Asian country. ● The train, which left the capital Ankara on Thursday, is carrying 394 tons of disaster relief materials. ● This shipment is being coordinated by the state-run Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD). ● The sendoff ceremony was attended by AFAD President Yunus Sezer and Pakistan's Ambassador to Ankara Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi. ● Nearly 1,200 people have lost their lives, while more than a million houses have been destroyed or damaged since mid-June, according to Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority.

Watch | Horrifying images and videos from Pakistan's 'monsoon on steroids' (08/30/22)

To assist the tens of millions of people devastated by the unrelenting "monsoon on steroids" that have drowned a third of the country and killed more than 1,100 people, aid activities have been stepped up throughout the inundated nation of Pakistan. ● In an emergency appeal on Tuesday, the UN has requested $160 million to assist Pakistan in dealing with floods that have killed more than 1,100 people, affected 33 million people, and devastated homes, businesses, infrastructure, and agriculture. ● Hundreds of thousands of women, children, and men, according to Pakistan's foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, were living outside without access to food, clean water, shelter, or even the most basic medical treatment.

- 1350 people killed
- 50M people displaced
- 900K livestock deaths
- 1M houses washed away
- 40+ reservoirs breached
- 220+ bridges collapsed
- 90% cropped damaged
- $10B loss to economy
- 1/3 country underwater

As the Israeli aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip continues, Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk expressed his full support for Tel Aviv, Israeli media reported on Sunday. 💬 “As a Ukrainian whose country is under a very brutal attack by its neighbor, I feel great sympathy towards the Israeli public,” Korniychuk said in a statement. “Attacks on women and children are reprehensible,” Korniychuk added. “Terrorism and malicious attacks against civilians are the daily reality of Israelis and Ukrainians and this appalling threat must be stopped immediately.”

Gaza Update: death toll in Israeli aggression reaches 43 Palestinians – many children
Gaza this Evening: Israeli Aggression and Palestinian Resistance (PHOTOS)
31 martyrs, including 6 children, in Israeli continued aggression on the Gaza Strip (08/08/22)

At least eight people have been killed and three others wounded in the latest assassination drone strike carried out by the US forces in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar. ● Afghan border police spokesman, Edris Mohmand, identified the victims as Taliban militants, adding that the aerial assault took place in the Lal Pur district of the province on Sunday morning. The Taliban have made no comments on the incident yet. The US-led foreign forces in Afghanistan have recently increased their air raids against civilian areas. The United States carries out targeted killings through drone strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

At least five people have been killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s northwestern restive tribal region near the Afghan border. ● Two missiles were fired on Saturday at a compound in Mada Khail neighborhood of Datta Khail area in North Waziristan. Local security officials confirmed the drone strike in Pakistan’s volatile northwest, warning that the death toll is expected to rise. It is difficult to verify the exact number of the dead as the area is off-limits to journalists. The US military carries out targeted killings through drone strikes in several Muslim nations such as Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia. Pakistan has borne the brunt of the notorious attacks, with large numbers of its citizens being killed.

At least 130 people, most of them students as young as 12, have been killed and at least 122 others injured in a Taliban seizure of a military-run school in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, according to provincial authorities. ● The numbers of dead and injured may still rise as the casualties of the assault are counted. Some 500 students and teachers were in the Army Public School on Warsak Road at the time of the attack. Pakistan’s military said most of the civilians escaped, but some had been taken hostage by the assailants. According to media reports, as many as 10 militants dressed in Pakistani military uniforms entered the school compound on Tuesday at around noon. They torched a car at the site and proceeded with a raid on the facility. “Seven to eight people attacked us, then an army soldier came to us and he asked [the] principal and teachers to take the children out of compound from the back gate. There were thousands [of] students in college. They were moved to auditorium, they can’t come out until the fight is ended,” Arshad Khan, a student at the school, told RT's Ruptly.

Sputnik News: Pakistani Tragedy Result of Permissive Attitude Towards Religious Violence

A package of tough fascist, far-reaching "counter-terrorism laws" tabled in Israel on Wednesday would make waving the Palestinian flag at demonstrations illegal and convictions for throwing firecrackers punishable by deportation to the Gaza Strip. ● In a move designed to halt the glorification of terrorism, the proposed law would also criminalize the printing of posters frequently distributed amongst the Palestinian community in the aftermath of attacks that celebrate the killers as "martyrs" [to celebrate killers as martyrs/heroes is an exclusive right of the Jews]. On Wednesday the eight-point plan was submitted to Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who ordered it in response to a recent spate of shooting, hit-and-run, and stabbing terror attacks centered on Jerusalem that have killed at least 11 Israelis. Clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli forces have become a frequent occurrence in the holy city following a summer of unrest, including a bloody 7-week war in Gaza that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians [mostly civilians] and 66 [duly celebrated] Israeli soldiers.

PressTV: Israel to nab Palestinians over Facebook posts

A US drone destroyed a house in Mada Khel village of North Waziristan today, killing six people and wounding three others. None of the slain were identified, but all were labeled “suspects.” ● If that story sounds awfully familiar, it’s because it is. Today’s attack marks the 500th confirmed US drone strike outside of actual warzones, with just about 10 years worth of strikes. The strikes were extremely rare at first, a couple a year in Pakistan during the waning years of the Bush Administration. Now the attacks are increasingly common, not just in Pakistan but in Yemen as well. The 500 attacks have killed some 3,674 people, and while only 473 are listed as confirmed civilians, the vast majority of the others slain have never been conclusively identified, remaining forever “suspects.”

Human rights activists from Pakistan and India, Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, have named as the joint winners of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. ● They earned the award by “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education,” the award’s committee said in a statement. "The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism," said Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. ● Seventeen-year-old Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head two years ago by the Taliban when she was on her way to school. She was targeted for being an active campaigner for girls’ rights to education, which the Taliban opposes. Malala survived the attack, and underwent treatment in the UK. She has continued her fight for human rights from there, as she is unable to return to Pakistan, facing death threats from the Taliban. ● Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, reacted to the award by describing Malala as the “pride of Pakistan.” Yousafzai becomes the youngest Nobel Prize winner, bypassing Australian-born British scientist Lawrence Bragg, who received the Nobel Prize for Physics at the age of 25. ● 60-year-old Kailash Satyarthi, the other joint winner of the Peace Prize, is an Indian children's rights advocate. He has actively campaigned against the use of child labor and in 1998 initiated an annual global march against the practice. The Nobel Committee has praised Satyarthi for “maintaining Gandhi’s tradition” in his human rights campaigning. "It's an honor to all those children still suffering in slavery, bonded labor and trafficking," Satyarthi told CNN-IBN TV after he learned of the award, Reuters reported. ● Malala and Satyarthi will receive the prize, worth about $1.1 million, at a December 10 ceremony in Oslo, Norway.

PressTV: Pakistan's Malala, India's Satyarthi jointly win Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Institute: Announcement: The Nobel Peace Prize for 2014

At least ten people have been killed following yet another bombing of Pakistan's tribal belt in the northeast of the country by US assassination drones. ● According to local security sources, the US drones struck a compound and a vehicle at a small market in the town of Datta Khel near the Afghan border. The sources [conveniently] further identified the casualties from the drone attack as "militants" [civilians]. Washington claims the targets of the drone attacks are militants, but local officials and witnesses maintain that civilians have been the main victims of such raids over the past few years.

A US assassination drone attack kills at least 11 people in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region near the border with Afghanistan. ● According to reports, the drone fired eight missiles at a building in North Waziristan region early on Saturday morning. The US carries out targeted killings through drone strikes in several Muslim nations such as Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia. US drone attacks in other countries have intensified since Barack Obama became the country's president.

Another US drone attack on Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt has killed at least 15 people amid the ongoing military campaign in the region by Pakistani armed forces. ● The strike by the pilotless US aircraft on Wednesday hit the border region of North Waziristan, where government troops have been engaged in fierce fighting aimed at purging the entire area of pro-Taliban militants and their fortifications, according to Pakistani authorities. “A US drone fired two missiles targeting a militant compound in Zoi Saidgai area, killing at least 15 insurgents,” said a high-ranking security official in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan.

There are an estimated 30 million slaves in the world today, more than at any other time in history. In case you missed it, earlier this month Real Clear World ran a profile of what slave labor looks like in Pakistan today. There are 1.8 million “debt laborers” in the country, and 2.2 million slaves over all (only India and China have more). The debt laborers are kept under the thumb of landlords who sell them back and forth and cook up ways of keeping them in bondage.

Walk Free: It is estimated that 29.8 million people are forced to live in slavery around the world today

US drones killed 16 Islamist "militants" at their "hideouts" in north-western Pakistan, in the first strikes by the unmanned aircraft in almost six months, officials said Thursday. Drones fired around 20 missiles at two separate locations in North Waziristan tribal district near the Afghan border, destroying compounds and vehicles allegedly used by "militants", security officials said. At least 10 suspected members of the Haqqani group of Afghan Taliban were killed in strikes early Thursday in the Dandy Darpa Khel area. Overnight, six militants, including Uzbek members of the Taliban, were killed in a separate drone attack in the Ghulam Khan area of North Waziristan, officials said.

Sampath Perera ■ Jinnah International Airport in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi was raided by an Islamist insurgent group late Sunday night. The fighting continued until Monday, causing a suspension of all operations at the airport, which is used by about 44,000 passengers daily. At least 37 people died, including 10 attackers, according to official accounts. [...] Soon after his election, Sharif pledged support for the US “war on terrorism,” which has served as a vehicle for asserting American hegemony over the region. However, his election promises of negotiations with the TTP reflected concerns within the Pakistani elite about the conflict’s damage to the crisis-ridden economy. The TTP’s apparent ability to target positions in major cities and industrial centres is undermining his government’s agenda to attract foreign investment. [...] The intensifying crisis in Pakistan is inseparably bound up with the escalating geo-political tensions in the region produced by Washington’s drive for dominance over the resource-rich Central Asian landmass, which is accompanied by its “pivot” to Asia to encircle China economically and militarily.

Karachi’s Airport has resumed operations today, but a deadly late night attack shut it down for many hours overnight. It appears that ten militants entered the airport Sunday night, most likely uniformed as airport security personnel, and killed up to 18 people before they were killed by airport security and rapidly responding military units. The TTP, Pakistan’s Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack. The New York Times and Reuters, however, chose to be very selective in how they reported the TTP’s claim of responsibility. Both news outlets left out the TTP’s prominent mention of the US drone strike in November that killed TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud in describing the TTP’s reasons for the attack. By contrast, AP and the Washington Post included the TTP’s reference to the drone strike.

The Pakistani Taliban on Monday claimed responsibility for an attack on Karachi airport that left at least 23 people dead, reportedly including 10 attackers. The group said the act was in revenge for their late leader Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone strike in November. The airport was chosen for the attack "because it serves as the biggest air logistics centre supplying goods for the Crusaders' war in Afghanistan and Pakistan", Umar Media, the official media wing of the Pakistani Taliban, said on its Facebook page. Pakistani officials said a military operation against the militants, who attacked the country’s busiest airport late on Sunday, ended shortly before dawn on June 9. However, security forces later announced that the military operation had been relaunched after gunfire at the airport resumed. For more, see here and here for a report on Pakistan's Dawn news site.

The White House has officially admitted that fake vaccination programs have been used by the United States as a cover for covertly stealing DNA samples from the public as part of the so-called "war on terror." The aim of the scheme, carried out in the Middle East, was to use DNA analysis to identify suspected terrorists who would then be targeted to be killed by the United States. As the New York Times reported in 2011, "In the months before Osama bin Laden was killed, the Central Intelligence Agency ran a phony vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan, as a ruse to obtain DNA evidence from members of Bin Laden's family thought to be holed up in an expansive compound there." "CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organize the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the "project" in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic," reports The Guardian.

An FBI agent is being held on anti-terrorism charges in Pakistan after authorities found ammunition in a bag as he boarded a plane in Karachi, Pakistani and U.S. officials said Tuesday. ● The agent was detained by airport police in Karachi about 4 p.m. Monday when he tried to board a Pakistan International Airlines flight to Islamabad. He was in possession of 15 bullets and a magazine for a 9mm pistol, police officials said. On Tuesday, he appeared in court on charges that he had violated local anti-terrorism laws that prohibit the carrying of weapons or ammunition on a commercial flight. A judge ordered that the agent be detained until at least Saturday so Pakistani security officials can investigate the matter.

Retired Pakistani General Hamid Gul says the United States and its allies are seeking to destroy Pakistan by fueling insecurity in the country. ● The former head of Pakistan’s Intelligence Service (ISI) alleged that Washington used the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City as a pretext to invade the neighboring Afghanistan. The former Pakistani intelligence chief, who was often accused of collaborating with the Taliban militant group in Pakistan and Afghanistan, also stated that the United States has failed in Afghanistan and is now seeking to destroy Pakistan. General Gul also pointed out that the US military will have to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and follow the example of the former Soviet Union in accepting defeat after its military occupation of the country in the late 1970s.

At least 273 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have been killed. ● The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people. According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

Top-secret documentation collected by Pakistani field officers gives detailed information on 330 US drone strikes that have occurred in Pakistan since 2006. The CIA-run program is estimated to have killed 2,371 people. ● From solitary individuals riding on horseback to mountain hideouts crammed with people, the CIA drone program has had no shortage of targets in the Islamic Republic, according to newly released information obtained by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ). The most complete official record of American drone activity in Pakistan yet published provides an account as to the time and place of each strike, even including in some cases the identity of the homeowners. The document is unique in that it provides a “strike-by-strike account,” opening the window on Pakistan’s view of each incident with that of other authorities.

Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Party, which controls the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan, continue to block a supply route for the US-led NATO forces stationed in neighboring Afghanistan, Press TV reports. ● The PTI activists, who are against the deadly US drone strikes in Pakistan, have blocked one of the main NATO routes on the outskirts of the province’s capital, Peshawar, since November 2013. Protesters spend days and nights stopping all travelling trucks and checking them to ensure they are not carrying supplies for US-led forces in Afghanistan, before clearing them to pass through the province. The continuation of the blockage comes as the protesters and their leaders in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been under intense pressure from the European Union, Washington as well as the Pakistani government to open the supply line.

The Defence of Pakistan Council (DPC)’s grand national jirga Sunday asked the government to allow the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) to shoot down the drones if the US refused to stop the drone attacks. The jirga also asked the government to immediately halt military operations in the tribal areas, particularly in North Waziristan, and open dialogue with the Taliban in line with the unanimous decisions of Parliament, the All Parties Conference and the Cabinet’s Committee on National Security.