When Taliban militant Syed Azizullah died during fighting in southern Afghanistan, his body was sent to his native Pakistan where a provincial official gave a eulogy before hundreds of Pashtun tribesmen. A flag of the Islamist militia fluttered by the grave.

Pakistani army helicopters have destroyed an insurgent hideout in north-western Pakistan and killed at least seven militants in an attack targeting an Egyptian al-Qaida operative wanted for the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Pakistani security forces backed by helicopter gunships struck a militant hide-out today in a tribal region near the Afghan border, killing about three dozen fighters, including a Chechen commander linked to al-Qaida.

Pakistan has yet to find the bodies of al-Qaida operatives thought to have been killed in a US missile strike more than two weeks ago and is still hunting for fugitive leaders of the terror group, an army spokesman said today.

An air strike in a remote Pakistani tribal area that killed at least 17 people was targeting al-Qaida second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri, who may have been using a suspected terrorist hideout, a senior official said today.

Health workers rushed to contain an outbreak of acute diarrhoea among hundreds of earthquake survivors at a squalid tent camp, and the Pakistani army appealed to donors today for more blankets, clothes and food for the coming winter.

The US military resumed relief flights in northern Pakistan today but would stay a “safe distance” from where one of its choppers allegedly came under attack as it ferried supplies to victims of the massive earthquake in divided Kashmir, a spokesman said.

FORECASTS of rain showers and light snow on earthquake-hit regions of northern Pakistan are threatening to compound the misery of hundreds of thousands of people living with little or no shelter.

Pakistan’s top army spokesman today claimed that a 26-year-old man has been pulled alive from the rubble of his quake-ruined home in northern Pakistan more than three weeks after South Asia’s massive earthquake, but a doctor treating the man said he doubted such a tale could be possible.

An international human rights group claimed today that Pakistani officials are storing tents and other relief supplies instead of immediately distributing them to earthquake survivors.

The UN World Food Programme today warned that half a million earthquake survivors had yet to receive relief supplies, and Pakistan’s president said during a visit to a quake-stricken town that he had appealed to the international community for more tents to shelter the homeless.

OFFICIALS last night sharply raised estimates of the dead from Pakistan’s monster quake to more than 54,000, while bad weather heaped more misery on hundreds of thousands of homeless survivors.

Rescuers today pulled a baby girl from the rubble of her home in Pakistan eight days after an earthquake killed tens of thousands of people, the military said.

A Pakistani military helicopter flying a quake relief mission crashed in bad weather near the Himalayan town of Bagh, killing all six people aboard, a senior army official said today.

Trucks of aid arrived in the ruined capital of Pakistan-ruled Kashmir today, and victims scuffled for badly needed food and blankets three days after a devastating earthquake flattened whole communities, killing tens of thousands and leaving millions homeless.

A WHOLE generation had been wiped out in the areas most devastated by the weekend’s huge earthquake in Pakistan, a military spokesman said yesterday, as UNICEF estimated up to 40,000 had been killed in the disaster.

More than 3,000 people died today when a massive earthquake triggered landslides, toppled an apartment building and flattened villages of mud-brick homes near the border between Pakistan and India.

A powerful 7.6-magnitude earthquake reduced villages to rubble in Pakistan and India on today, killing hundreds of people. Pakistan’s army described the damage as widespread and said it included villages buried in quake-induced landslides.

Up to 1,000 people are feared dead after a magnitude 7.6 earthquake jolted south Asia today, collapsing buildings and triggering landslides.

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake jolted south Asia today, killing at least 21 people and injuring hundreds of others in Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.

Dozens of people are feared dead after a major earthquake struck parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and northern India.

OSAMA BIN LADEN is hiding out with a small core of mainly Arab supporters, and the al-Qaida leader only sends messages by courier because his communications network has been destroyed, senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials said yesterday.

A Pakistani military court sentenced five men to death today for their roles in a 2003 plot to kill President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, an army spokesman said.

Pakistan today test fired its first cruise missile, capable of carrying nuclear and conventional warheads, and did not give advance warning to its archrival India, officials said.

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf says foreign students will be ordered to leave Islamic religious schools and has said leaders of banned extremist groups will be arrested, in a new anti-terror crackdown.

Fighting between insurgents and US-led coalition and Afghan forces in the country’s troubled east left 12 rebels dead and one US soldier slightly wounded, the US military said today.

Troops in helicopters brought badly needed relief supplies to flood-swamped villages in southwestern Pakistan, as the nationwide death toll from a week of heavy rain and snow climbed past 360.

More than 400 people are missing in a remote area of south-western Pakistan after heavy rains caused a large dam to burst, sweeping villagers into the Arabian Sea, a provincial official said today.

Pakistan today denied a newspaper report the CIA has set up covert bases in the country’s remote tribal regions to hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Suspected Islamic militants fired rockets at security forces in a restive Pakistani border region today and troops returned fire, an official said.

Pakistani jets pounded a suspected training camp for foreign militants - including Uzbeks, Arabs and Chechens – in a two hour barrage in tribal South Waziristan today.

A man accused of being a senior al-Qaida operative who was arrested in Britain during anti-terror raids earlier this month secretly visited a remote Pakistani tribal region near Afghanistan in March, a British army spokesman and intelligence source said today.

Pakistani troops pounded a cluster of suspected al-Qaida hideouts and a training facility with artillery, mortar and small arms fire during a third day of violence in a lawless tribal region near the border with Afghanistan.

A SENIOR Pakistani general narrowly escaped assassination yesterday following a gun attack that left nine people dead.

The senior general in Pakistan’s volatile city of Karachi narrowly escaped an assassination today as his motorcade came under a gun and bomb ambush that left at least nine people dead.

Gunmen ambushed a Pakistani general’s convoy in the volatile city of Karachi today, killing at least four people and injuring 10.

Pakistan successfully test fired a medium-range nuclear-capable missile today, one week after a new prime minister took office in nuclear rival and neighbour India.

Pakistan’s president said junior army and air force personnel were involved in an assassination attempt against him in December and that the suspects have been captured.

The US' top commander in Afghanistan has questioned Pakistan’s commitment to fight Taliban and al-Qaida militants along the border, saying appeasing extremists will only put off an inevitable battle.

The bodies of two Pakistani government officials have been found dumped in a well after they were abducted two weeks ago at the start of a major counter-terrorism operation, during which the military claims it killed the top al-Qaida intelligence chief.

TALIBAN leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was wounded in a US air raid that killed four of his bodyguards earlier this month, according to reports in Pakistan.

Pakistani troops have begun withdrawing from some parts of western Pakistan after militants agreed to release captured soldiers and politicians.

Eight Pakistani soldiers whose bodies were found in a remote northwestern tribal region with their hands tied behind their backs were slain by militants who had taken them hostage, military and government officials said today.

FIFTEEN soldiers were killed and 15 injured when a Pakistani army convoy heading toward a counter- terrorism sweep against al-Qaida militants near the Afghan border was ambushed, officials said yesterday.