Turkey has agreed to modernise the Pakistan Air Force’s fleet of F-16s at a cost of $75 million amid the controversy surrounding the purchase of new jets from the United States.

A senior official of the Istanbul-based Foreign Economic Relations Board (DIEK) on Saturday told reporters both countries have struck a deal in an aviation project under which some Pakistani fighter planes have already been flown to Turkey.

Volkan Yuzer, Asia-Pacific regional coordinator at DIEK, said Pak-Turkish multi-faceted relations were growing in the defence sector. He added Turkey was already manufacturing engines for F-16 jets in addition to making some of their spare parts.

Talking about business opportunities in Pakistan, Yuzer said at least 100 Turkish companies were already operating successfully in the country and had invested $2.7 billion in various projects by 2014.

More investment, he added, is expected in the energy, infrastructure and beverages projects. Replying to a question on signing the Free-Trade Agreement between the two countries expected by September this year, Yuzer said both sides were working out the details of the agreement.

According to the website of Turkish Aerospace industries (TAI), the Pakistan Air Force had awarded the tender of modernisation of its 41 F-16 aircraft to TAI in June 2009. The upgrade of jets started in the last quarter of 2010 when the first three aircraft were flown to Turkey.

Great-granddaughter of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan aka Bacha Khan has accused Pakistan’s homegrown terror groups of carrying out dastardly attacks on the university, killing 21 innocent people.

“It’s unbelievable that any Afghan would attack a university that is named after Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. So the popular notion that Tehrik-e-Taliban is responsible for the attack on the Bacha Khan University is a cooked up story,” Yasmin told Hindustan Times.

She further told HT that Taliban also did not carry out Peshawar school attack which claimed the lives of 150 people dead.

“The Pakistani government and terrorist outfits supported by Pakistan are responsible for both the attacks. They have a dual mission: first to vitiate the minds of the Pakhtoons from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan against the Afghans because Afghanistan is supporting the cause of an independent Pakhtoonistan,” she said.

“Second, Pakistan wants public sentiments to be (once again) in its favour after the recent attack on the Pathankot airbase by terrorist outfits from Pakistan,” she added.

42-year-old Yasmin has never been to Pakistan as she fears she would be arrested for her open support to independent Pakhtoonistan.

The Taliban faction behind a massacre at a university in northwest Pakistan this week issued a video message Friday vowing to target schools throughout the country, calling them “nurseries” for people who challenge Allah`s law.

The video, which spread rapidly on Facebook but was not released on official media accounts for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP), shows Khalifa Umar Mansoor, whose faction claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan university Wednesday.

Heavily armed gunmen stormed the campus in Charsadda in northwest Pakistan, killing 21 people in an attack that had chilling echoes of a 2014 assault on a school in nearby Peshawar, also claimed by Mansoor`s faction.

The rampage threatened to shatter the sense of security growing in the troubled region a year after the Peshawar attack, which left more than 150 people dead — mostly children.

In the video issued Friday, Mansoor said his faction had attacked the university “because this is the place where lawyers are made, this is the place that produces military officers, this is the place that produces members of the parliament, all of whom challenge Allah`s sovereignty”.

Instead of targeting armed soldiers, he said, “we will target the nurseries that produce these people”.

“We will continue to attack schools, colleges and universities across Pakistan as these are the foundations that produce apostates. We will target and demolish the foundations,” he said.

Mansoor issued a similar video in the wake of the Peshawar attack on December 16, 2014, Pakistan`s deadliest ever extremist assault.

He said schools like the one in Peshawar, which is some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Charsadda, were “preparing those generals, brigadiers and majors who killed and arrested so many fighters”.

“If our women and children died as martyrs your children will not escape. If you attack us we will take revenge for the innocents,” he said in the video message, also posted online.

Analysts have said the Taliban sent a message of impunity with Wednesday`s attack, that a national crackdown on extremism has failed and they can hit targets at will.

The TTP, an umbrella group, has officially disavowed the Bacha Khan attack, branding it “un-Islamic” and vowing to hunt down those behind it.

Pakistan and Afghanistan need to work together to effectively overcome the Taliban challenge, the White House said, a day after the militant group massacred 21 people, mostly students, at a popular Pakistani university.

“The conclusion that we’ve drawn here is…that the Taliban poses a security threat to both countries, and that the nations of Afghanistan and Pakistan are going to be able to more effectively confront that threat if they’re able to more effectively cooperate,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters yesterday.

Earnest said the US has long been supportive of the reconciliation process between the Afghan government and the Taliban. He said the US is hoping to facilitate better co-operation between the two South Asian neighbours.

As part of that role, US Vice President Joe Biden held a tri-lateral meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Davos yesterday to discuss the recent reconciliation efforts.

During the meeting, Biden reaffirmed US support for reconciliation and improved bilateral ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan. “Any sort of decisions about how the continuation of those talks and any sort of agreement that could be produced by those talks about whether or not that’s in the interest of those countries to pursue — those are decisions that will be made by the leaders in those two countries, as it should be,” he said.

But the US will continue to play the role that it has played for some time now in supporting reconciliation talks that are led by those individual countries, he added.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and the US have called on all Afghan Taliban groups to start talks with Kabul to find a political solution to the long-running conflict in the war-torn country.

On Wednesday, heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed the Bacha Khan University, named after the iconic Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and opened fire on students and teachers, killing 21 people.

A group of militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens as the Army hunted for any gunmen still holed up on the campus, officials said.

A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 as the Army cleared out student hostels and classrooms.

“Our four suicide attackers carried out the attack on Bacha Khan University today,” Umar Mansoor, a commander in the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP) militant group told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party strongly condemns the terrorist attack on Bacha Khan University.

According to ‘AFP’, the operation has ended and the death toll in Pakistan university attack stands at 21 as of now. Meanwhile, Army continues to search block by block of the university.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan will visit Charsadda today.

Reports say that Pakistani Army has confirmed that snipers have killed two more terrorists. Four terrorists killed so far.

Deputy Inspector General Saeed Wazir says 70 percent of students have been rescued.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Paksitan claims responsibility for Bacha Khan University terror attack.

Pakistan Nawaz Sharif condemns the terror attack and said the sacrifice of the deceased will not go in vain. “We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland. The countless sacrifices made by our countrymen will not go in vain,” a statement issued on behalf of the Pakistan PM said.

Pakistan police say they have killed two of the militants who stormed the university.

Pakistan media reports that 60-70 students were shot in the head by terrorists.

Speaking to Reuters, Deputy Inspector General Saeed Wazir said the Army and police had moved into the university and a gunfight with the attackers was under way. He said it was unclear how many gunmen were involved.

One professor is reported to be killed in the attack.

Pakistan media reports that 50 have been injured in the terror attack and have been shifted to Charsadda District HQ hospital

Media reported that three gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels.

The Bacha Khan University in Charsadda is about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the city of Peshawar.

Reports say that firing was still going on inside the campus where students, teachers and administration staff are present.

Television images showed female students clutching hands as they fled the university, with traffic blocked on the roads of Charsadda as security forces rushed towards the campus.

According to some reports two explosions were heard inside the university.

Geo TV reports that five injured have been taken out from the university.

It further said that over 3000 students were present inside the university when the attack happened.

Security officials have cordoned off the area and students are being evacuated from classes.

Peshawar was the location of Pakistan`s deadliest ever extremist attack, when Taliban gunmen stormed an army-run school in December last year and slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them children, in an hours-long siege.

Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has rubbished suggestions that the Pathankot attack was the handiwork of ISI and Pak Army.

The military ruler-turned president went on to claim that he was reasonably sure that non-state actor Masood Azhar was behind the Pathankot terror attack.

“Masood Azhar should not be roaming free (in Pakistan) after trying to assassinate me,” he told the news channel.

Musharraf also alleged that PM Narendra Modi is not sincere in engaging talks with Islamabad, adding that there was no substance in Indian PM’s meeting with Nawaz Sharif as it was just ‘optics’.

The deadly terror attack on Pathankot air base on January 2 had left six security personnel dead. All six terrorists were also neutralised.

Pakistan’s former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf was today acquitted by an anti-terrorism court in the murder case of Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

The court in Balochistan’s provincial capital Quetta acquitted former president Musharraf, ex-provincial home minister Mir Shoaib Nosherwani and Qaumi Watan Party chief and member of National Assembly Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao.

After the announcement of the decision by Judge Jan Muhammad Gohar, the lawyer representing Bugti’s son Jamil Bugti, Sohail Rajput, announced his decision to challenge the judgment of the court, the Dawn reported.

“They should have been convicted and I do not understand why the court set them free,” Rajput said.

“We are not satisfied with this judgement and we will challenge it,” Rajput told reporters outside court.

Musharraf, 72, was indicted in the case in January 2015. The court also rejected the request by Jamil to order exhumation of the body of his father to confirm that the body buried in Dera Bugti was that of Akbar Bugti.

In a separate application, Jamil had requested the court to summon the members of a parliamentary committee who had met Akbar Bugti following the violence in Dera Bugti in March 2005
in which dozens were killed.

Jamil had named Musharraf, former Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, former Governor of Balochistan Owais Ahmed Ghani, ex-interior minister Sherpao and others for the murder.

Bugti, former chief minister of Balochistan and head of his tribe, was killed in 2006 in a military operation ordered by Musharraf who was president and army chief at the time. His killing sparked nationwide protests and further fuelled an armed insurgency that began in 2004 in Balochistan.

Two co-accused – Musharraf’s then interior minister Sherpao and ex-provincial home minister Nusherwan – were also indicted for their alleged role in the murder of Bugti. Musharraf never appeared in the court during the entire legal process which had been in progress since 2009.

He was also absent when the charge-sheet was read out in the court. Musharraf came to power in a bloodless coup in 1999, deposing then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Facing impeachment following elections in 2008, Musharraf resigned as president and went into self-imposed exile in Dubai.

The ex-army chief is facing a slew of court cases after returning from five years of self-exile in Dubai to contest the general elections in 2013 which he lost.

He is also facing trial in high treason case for abrogating the constitution in 2007 and illegal detention of judges same year.

Yet again spewing venom against India, 26/11 attacks mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed has said that the neighbouring country is within the range of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

“India and Israel are within the range of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,” Saeed said while addressing JuD supporters on 15 January.

The 2008 Mumbai attacks mastermind didn’t even spared his own Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. While targeting Sharif, the JuD chief said the Pakistani Premier wasn’t able to put forward Islamabad’s case when he met President Barack Obama in the US.

The JuD chief said that Sharif went to US with a file allegedly containing evidence against India and its spy wing RAW for spreading terror in Pakistan, but it was of no help to the country, Saeed maintained.

“When the Pakistan Premier reached US, he had to first meet US Secretary of State John Kerry who asked him to handover the file to him. After reluctantly giving the file to Kerry Sharif met Obama, who refused to pay heed to accusations against India and asked him about the action taken by Pakistan against JuD, Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Toiba,” Saeed said.

Saeed also put his weight behind the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad, saying that Pakistan government is taking action against JeM to “please” Modi government in India.

“The arrests are regrettable as the Nawaz government is only doing so to please Modi sarkar (government). The arrests will only encourage the Indian government to put further pressure on Pakistan to backtrack it’s stance on Kashmir,” he said.

Saeed further said the Pakistani government is ignoring “national interest” for the sake of its friendship with India.

Lahore: Pakistani authorities have shut down several religious schools run by the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group accused of masterminding an attack this month on an air base in India, the provincial law minister said on Friday.

The crackdown in Punjab province, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif`s power base and the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammad, follows the arrest this week of several members of the militant group, including its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, an Islamist hardliner and long-time foe of India.

Pakistan has said it is clamping down on Azhar`s group, which India has long accused Pakistani authorities of tolerating, while it investigates Indian assertions that the January 2 attack on the Pathankot air base was the work of the Pakistan-based militants.

“Officials of the Counter-Terrorism Department raided the Jamiatul Nur seminary in the Daska area on Thursday and arrested more than a dozen people,” Rana Sanaullah, the law minister of the Punjab province where Jaish-e-Mohammad is headquartered, told Reuters.

“The seminary has been sealed off and documents and literature have been confiscated from the premises.”

In a volte-face, Pakistan’s Foreign Office on Thursday said it has no idea if Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar has been detained in connection with terror attack at Pathankot airbase in India.

The development raises question mark on Pakistan’s commitment to act against terrorism.

On Wednesday, Pakistani media had reported that the JeM chief, known for his close ties with Pakistani intelligence agencies, was taken to an undisclosed destination and was questioned as part of a crackdown.

Reports had also claimed the detention of his brother Mufti Abdul Rauf and brother-in-law Ashfaq Ahmad as well as some 10 others.

Pakistani media quoted unidentified sources as saying that “concerned authorities” interrogated Masood Azhar and the others about the Pathankot attack that left seven security personnel dead.

India says all six terrorists who raided the IAF base and got killed were Pakistanis and were allied to the JeM. India later said it had delivered “actionable intelligence” for Pakistan to act against the attack plotters.

The Pathankot attack took place just a week after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to Lahore and met his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in a bid to push forward the dialogue between the two countries.