Pakistani security forces said Wednesday they had foiled a plot to bomb Independence Day celebrations in Karachi after arresting a Taliban gang in the city.<\/p>\n
Militants had been planning to detonate a van loaded with explosives in the country’s largest city during Friday’s celebrations marking independence from Britain in 1947, a statement from the military said.<\/p>\n
“In an intelligence-based operation security forces have… foiled a terrorist bid\u00a0planned to sabotage\u00a014 August\u00a0celebrations in Karachi,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
The military released photos showing four men detained in the operation along with the van, a motorbike and bomb-making equipment.<\/p>\n
Police and government paramilitary forces have been mounting an operation against militants and criminals in Karachi since September 2013.<\/p>\n
The city of 20 million people, Pakistan’s economic capital, has been racked in recent years by criminal, ethnic, political and religious violence.<\/p>\n
In June last year the military launched a major operation against Taliban strongholds in Pakistan’s tribal northwest aimed at ending the bloody insurgency that has plagued the country for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
The offensive intensified after December last year when Taliban militants attacked a school in Peshawar and killed over 150 people — mostly children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pakistani security forces said Wednesday they had foiled a plot to bomb Independence Day celebrations in Karachi after arresting a Taliban gang in the city. Militants had been planning to detonate a van loaded with explosives in the country’s largest city during Friday’s celebrations marking independence from Britain in 1947, a statement from the military […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":10675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}