QUETTA: Gunmen riding on motorcycles carried out two separate attacks in the Pakistani city of Quetta on Monday, killing five Muslims in one shooting and four members of a Christian family in the other, police said.
Abdul Qadeer, a local police chief, said the attacks were apparently unrelated. It was unclear who was behind the attacks in Quetta, which is home to ethnic Baluch separatists as well as Islamic militants.
Earlier Monday, Pakistan’s army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa confirmed death sentences for 10 convicted militants, including the killer of a well-known Sufi singer, according to a military statement.
The military courts found the “terrorists” guilty of taking part in separate attacks that killed 62 people, it said.
The trials are closed to the public, but defendants are allowed to hire lawyers.
One of those whose sentence was confirmed was found guilty of a 2016 attack in Karachi that killed Amjad Sabri. He and his late father, Ghulam Farid Sabri, were renowned qawwali singers, a style of music rooted in Islamic mysticism.
Pakistan resumed military trials for convicted terrorists and lifted a moratorium on the death penalty after a 2014 attack on a school in Peshawar that killed more than 150 people, mostly young students.
Gunmen kill 9 in separate attacks in Pakistan’s Quetta
Gunmen kill 9 in separate attacks in Pakistan’s Quetta
- Five Muslims, in one shooting and four members of a Christian family in the other, police said.
- Five Muslims, four members of a Christian family were killed in separate attacks.
US Republicans back Trump on Iran strikes, block bid to rein in war powers
- Republicans blocked prior efforts to curb Trump’s war powers
- Prolonged war could affect November mid-term elections
WASHINGTON: US Senate Republicans backed President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran on Wednesday, voting to block a bipartisan resolution aiming to stop the air war and require that any hostilities against Iran be authorized by Congress.
As voting continued, the tally in the 100-member Senate was 52 to 47 not to advance the resolution, largely along party lines, with almost every Republican voting against the procedural motion and almost every Democrat supporting it.
The latest effort by Democrats and a few Republicans to rein in President Donald Trump’s repeated foreign troop deployments, sponsors described the war powers resolution as a bid to take back Congress’ responsibility to declare war, as spelled out in the US Constitution.
Opponents rejected this, insisting that Trump’s action was legal and within his right as commander in chief to protect the United States by ordering limited strikes.
“This is not a forever war, indeed not even close to it. This is going to end very quickly,” Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a speech against the resolution.
The measure had not been expected to succeed. Trump’s fellow Republicans hold slim majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and have blocked previous resolutions seeking to curb his war powers.
US Senator Ted Cruz speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on March 4, 2026, ahead of the vote on a resolution aimed at curbing President Donald Trump's authority to continue military strikes on Iran. (AFP)
