Pakistani Taliban

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - It's a world of likes, apps and status updates, so it was bound to happen: The Pakistani Taliban now has its own Facebook page. The Pakistani insurgent group's spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, confirmed that it had put a page called Umar Media TTP on the social media website. TTP is the acronym for Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, the group's name in Urdu. Formed in 2007, the Pakistani Taliban is an amalgam of factions united by the goal of toppling the current government and imposing sharia, or Islamic law. The Pakistani Taliban maintains links with Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and other Pakistani militant groups entrenched in their country's tribal belt.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - For three long years, the CIA hunted the Pakistani militant who had helped send a suicide bomber deep into a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan. The audacious mission killed seven U.S. intelligence officers and contractors, one of the deadliest days in agency history. Early Wednesday, the CIA apparently sought at least partial payback. Drone aircraft fired four missiles into a mud-walled compound in Pakistan's tribal area while the suspect was supposedly asleep.

People here remember when hundreds of Pakistani Taliban militants roamed through the forested ridges flanking the Chail River, armed not with AK-47s but with axes. Employing termite-like efficiency, the militants felled and carted away vast swaths of Himalayan cedar, blue pine and oak, leaving mountainsides dotted with stumps. Through illegal logging, the Taliban generated quick cash to keep its arsenals stocked. But nearly a decade of tree felling by militants and 35 years of deforestation by unscrupulous timber businesses and wealthy landowners have had an unforeseen consequence.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Bomb blasts tore through two village mosques in northwest Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than 25, local authorities said. The bombings occurred in the village of Baz Darrah in the Malakand region, a rugged, mountainous area just west of Pakistan's Swat Valley. The bombs were detonated just as locals had arrived at the mosques for Friday afternoon prayers, said Malakand Deputy Commissioner Amjad Ali. Investigators were still trying to determine how the bombs were detonated, Ali said.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Peshawar, Pakistan -- Faced with the prospect of rifts among its ranks after a U.S. drone strike killed leader Baitullah Mahsud, the Pakistani Taliban announced today that it had chosen one of his deputies to succeed him. A 28-year-old commander named Hakimullah Mahsud will lead Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant organization based in the tribal areas along the Afghan border and blamed for many of...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- The Pakistani Taliban, an insurgent group focused mostly on the Pakistani state but which claimed responsibility for a failed bomb attack in New York nearly three years ago, has denied any involvement in the bomb blasts at the Boston Marathon on Monday. The group is responsible for many of the suicide bombings and terror attacks that have wreaked havoc on this South Asian nation for years. It does, however, regard the U.S. as an enemy and helped train Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani American who confessed to engineering a botched bombing attempt in New York's Times Square in 2010.

The 14-year-old boy with acne dotting his chin yanked down the scarf concealing his face and recounted his 12 days in a Taliban training camp -- starting with the day six masked militants kidnapped him as he picked onions on a farm in the Swat Valley. They blindfolded him and brought him to an abandoned girls' school, he said, where he and scores of other Pakistani boys ran hills for 2 1/2 hours every day and listened to Taliban trainers extol the glory of waging holy war against the Pakistani army.

The U.S. citizen who attempted to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square on May 1 was trained and funded by a Pakistani militant group that works closely with Al Qaeda to plot attacks against the U.S., top Obama administration officials said Sunday. "We've now developed evidence that shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said on ABC's "This Week." "We know that they helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it. And that he was working at their direction."

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Peshawar, Pakistan -- A would-be successor to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud was reportedly killed today in a gun battle between rival factions of the militant group, in a sign that rifts are surfacing in the wake of his death from a U.S. missile strike. Hakimullah Mahsud, regarded as a leading candidate to replace Baitullah Mahsud, was shot and killed in the exchange of gunfire, said intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The main suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing received several days of training in Pakistan's Mohmand region and roughly $15,000 from the Pakistani Taliban to finance the attack, according to U.S. officials briefed on the case. It appears likely that Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani American accused of leaving a Nissan Pathfinder loaded with fertilizer and propane tanks in Times Square on May 1, came up with the idea of the car bomb himself, one official said. Shahzad then apparently persuaded the militant group to give him assistance when he traveled to Pakistan's border region in 2009 or early 2010, they said.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's overwhelming victory in weekend parliamentary elections returns to power a seasoned politician who historically has had rocky ties with Pakistan's powerful military and is viewed by many as soft on militants and extremist groups. The expected showdown between Sharif, 63, and former cricket-star-turned-politician Imran Khan never really materialized. Sharif's party swept the elections, putting him in a position to lead the next government and become prime minister for an unprecedented third time.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's overwhelming victory in parliamentary elections this weekend returns to power a seasoned politician who historically has had rocky ties with Pakistan's powerful military and is viewed by many as soft on militants and extremist groups. The expected showdown between Sharif, 63, and former cricket star Imran Khan never really materialized, as Sharif swept the elections and put himself in a position to become prime minister for an unprecedented third time.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - After a bloody campaign season marred by waves of bombings and candidate assassinations, Pakistanis turned out in large numbers Saturday to elect a new parliament in what is slated to be the first democratic transition of civilian governments  in a country with a history of military coups and forced political ousters. The new national assembly that comes out of Saturday's elections has the responsibility of choosing a new prime minister and charting a course that would lead Pakistan out of economic stagnancy and militancy that has resulted in thousands of deaths in recent years.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistanis went to the polls Saturday to elect a new parliament amid continued violence marring the historic event, as militants detonated a bomb outside a liberal, anti-Taliban party's campaign office in the southern port city of Karachi, killing 10  people and injuring at least 15. The elections mark the first democratic transition of one civilian government to another in the nuclear-armed state, which has endured a...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Two bomb blasts killed at least 15 people and injured more than 40 on Tuesday at campaign rallies in northwest Pakistan, authorities said, the latest in a wave of attacks in recent weeks aimed at derailing parliamentary elections scheduled for Saturday. [Updated 9:09 a.m. May 7: Also on Tuesday, former cricketer Imran Khan suffered minor head injuries after falling from a forklift platform that was lifting him up to a stage at a rally in the eastern city of Lahore.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - For the second day in a row, a bomb blast killed and maimed participants at a campaign rally being held by one of Pakistan's Islamist religious parties, indicating a broadening of targets in the violence that has primarily taken aim at secular parties competing in parliamentary elections scheduled for Saturday. Two bombings Tuesday killed at least 15 people and injured more than 40 at campaign rallies in northwestern Pakistan, including one being held by a religious party, Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, authorities said.

SHABQADAR, Pakistan - When Masoom Shah hits the campaign trail these days, he brings a 9-millimeter Glock pistol and a team of up to 50 bodyguards. Instead of appearing before large crowds, he meets small clusters of voters at guesthouses where everyone is frisked before they enter. He limits his speeches to 30 minutes and then quickly slips out of the room. And at the end of the day, he returns home and prays. "I say to God, 'Thank you, another peaceful day has passed,'" said Shah, 45, a member of Pakistan's secular, anti-Taliban Awami National Party, or ANP, and a provincial assembly candidate in the country's volatile northwest.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A Pakistani court on Tuesday slapped former military ruler Pervez Musharraf with a lifetime ban that prevents him from running for public office again, the latest in a long line of setbacks for the onetime president since his return to his home country after four years of self-imposed exile. The 69-year-old former general is already under house arrest for ordering the detention of dozens of judges in 2007 while he was in power. He is being held at his sprawling home in Islamabad rather than in jail, a measure authorities opted for because of threats made to the former leader's life by Pakistani Taliban militants.