Pakistani police say gunmen have opened fire on vehicles carrying Shiite Muslims in the country's restive northwest, killing at least 42 people and wounding 20 others.

Officials say Pakistan has detected one more polio case in the restive northwest bordering Afghanistan, raising the country’s tally of the infectious disease to 50 cases this year.

Authorities in Pakistan say a key suspect in connection with a deadly attack at a mosque in a police compound nearly two years ago has been arrested and has been identified as a police officer.

Officials say a suicide bomber blew himself up at a train station in restive southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 26 people, including soldiers, and wounding 62 others.

Authorities in a broad swath of eastern Pakistan have closed all parks and museums because of record-breaking smog that already has prompted the closure of schools and government offices and has sickened tens of thousands of people.

Record-high air pollution in Pakistan’s Punjab province prompted authorities to keep government employees at home and close additional schools, as doctors reported an increase in people seeking treatment for smog-related ailments.

Pakistani officials say militants attacked a health center used in an ongoing anti-polio campaign in the country's northwest, triggering a shootout that left two police officers dead.

Pakistan has begun a nationwide vaccination campaign to protect 45 million children from polio after a surge in new cases.

Polio cases are rising ahead of a new vaccination campaign in Pakistan, where violence targeting health workers and the police protecting them has hampered years of efforts toward making the country polio-free.

Leaders and top officials from an international group founded to counter Western alliances have met in Pakistan’s capital, with Moscow and Beijing announcing they will boost cooperation.

Pakistani officials say the executive board of the International Fund has approved a new $7 billion loan for the country.

Police say a pair of gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire and killed a policeman guarding a group of polio workers going door-to-door in a vaccination campaign in northwestern Pakistan.

Pakistani police say gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on police escorting a team of polio workers during a door-to-door vaccination campaign in the northwest, killing an officer and a polio worker.

Officials say a roadside bomb has hit a vehicle carrying officers assigned to protect health workers conducting a polio immunization drive in a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban in northwestern Pakistan, wounding six officers and three civilians.

Experts says that millions of people in Pakistan continue to live along the path of floodwaters showing neither people nor the government have learned any lessons from the 2022 devastating floods that killed 1,737 people.

Residents of Indian-controlled Kashmir are gearing up for their first regional election in a decade that will allow them to have their own truncated government, also known as a local assembly, instead of remaining under New Delhi’s direct rule.

A separatist group has claimed responsibility for the deadliest day in recent history in Pakistan’s Balochistan and warned that “even more intense and widespread” attacks are coming.

The death toll from Pakistan’s deadliest bandit attack on police has risen to 12 after one of the wounded officers died in a hospital in the eastern province of Punjab.

Pakistani officials say gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades ambushed a police convoy in eastern Punjab province, killing at least 11 officers and wounding several others.

Officials say flash floods triggered by the latest monsoon rains have swept through streets in southern Pakistan and blocked a key highway in the north.

Officials say Pakistan’s police have arrested the deputy chief at a radical Islamist party on charges of ordering the killing of the chief justice over his alleged support to the minority Ahmadi community.

Dozens of members from Pakistan’s civil society have rallied in the southern port city of Karachi against the death sentence handed down to a Christian man on blasphemy charges, nearly a year after one of the worst mob attacks in the country on Christians.

Officials say a days-long intense heat wave has disrupted normal life in Pakistan, especially in the southern city of Karachi, where doctors have treated thousands of victims of heatstroke.

Pakistan won the toss and chose to bowl first against Ireland with both teams aiming to bow out of the Twenty20 World Cup with a consolation win.

The United States cricket team has made more history by qualifying for the second round in its Twenty20 World Cup debut after its last group game against Ireland was washed out in Florida.

The United States national cricket team already made a dent in the hierarchy of the game by beating Pakistan last week at the Twenty20 World Cup.

Pace bowler Jasprit Bumrah has helped India to a six-run win over archrival Pakistan in a low-scoring Twenty20 World Cup thriller on Long Island.

Pakistani police say gunmen opened fire on polio workers in the country's northwest, killing a police officer assigned to protect them.

About 6.5 million children in Afghanistan are forecast to experience crisis levels of hunger in 2024.

Officials say a speeding passenger bus fell off a highway into a ravine in southwest Pakistan, killing 28 people and injuring 20.

Authorities in Pakistan urged people to stay indoors as the country is hit by an extreme heat wave that threatens to bring dangerously high temperatures and yet another round of glacial-driven floods.

Lightning and heavy rains led to 14 deaths in Pakistan, officials said Wednesday, bringing the death toll from four days of extreme weather to at least 63.

India says it has successfully conducted its first test flight of a domestically developed missile that can carry multiple warheads.

Pakistan’s National Assembly swore in newly elected members on Thursday in a chaotic scene, as allies of jailed former Premier Imran Khan protested what they claim was a rigged election.

A lawyer for former Prime Minister Imran Khan says the legal team has appealed his recent convictions and sentences in three controversial legal cases.

Pakistan's parliamentary elections left no clear winner.

Pakistan has hit back at criticism over the conduct of its parliamentary elections, which were held amid sporadic militant attacks and an unprecedented suspension of all mobile phone services.

Bombs have ripped through two separate political offices in southwestern Pakistan a day before the country is set to elect a new parliament.

Pakistan’s prime minister has called for unified efforts to tackle global infectious diseases like COVID-19 and emergencies caused by climate change, nearly 1 1/2-year after devastating floods killed 1,700 people in his nation.

Authorities say suspected militants have shot and killed two police officers assigned to escort polio workers in northwest Pakistan during the nationwide campaign against polio.

A roadside bomb has exploded near a van carrying police assigned to protect workers in an anti-polio immunization campaign in restive northwestern Pakistan, killing at least six officers and wounding 10 others.

Pakistan’s independent human rights commission says there is little chance of free and fair parliamentary elections in the country next month because of “pre-poll rigging.”.

Officials say a massive fire has swept through a multi-story commercial building in Pakistan’s largest southern port city of Karachi, killing at least three people and damaging several shops.

Toxic gray smog has sickened tens of thousands of people in Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore, forcing authorities to shut schools, markets and parks for four days.

A federal court in Pakistan’s capital has restored the appeals of the country’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif against his 2018 convictions in graft cases.

A group of former U.S. diplomats and representatives of resettlement organizations has asked Pakistan not to deport thousands of Afghans who have been waiting for U.S. visas under an American program that relocates at-risk Afghan refugees fleeing Taliban rule.

Men dug through rubble with their bare hands and shovels in western Afghanistan on Sunday in desperate attempts to pull victims from the wreckage of earthquakes that killed at least 2,000 people.

Amnesty International is urging Pakistan to maintain its support for Afghan refugees by enabling them to live with dignity and be free from the fear of deportation to Afghanistan where they face persecution by the Taliban.

Pakistan has launched its second nationwide anti-polio campaign of the year Monday in an effort to inoculate 44 million children under the age of 5.

Authorities in one province of Pakistan are turning to a controversial new tactic in the decades-long initiative to wipe out polio: prison.

The centuries-old card game of bridge is being played at the Asian Games.

Schoolchildren who were rescued from a broken cable car dangling high above a valley in Pakistan say they repeatedly feared they were about to die during the 16-hour ordeal despite attempts by their parents to reassure them over cellphones.

Police in eastern Pakistan have arrested 129 Muslims after a mob angered over an alleged desecration of a Quran by two men attacked more than a dozen churches and homes of minority Christians.

A senior Swedish official says Swedes abroad and businesses linked to Sweden “should observe increased vigilance and caution,” following recent Quran burnings in the country and protests in the Muslim world.

When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in August 2021 it airlifted tens of thousands of Afghans to safety.

Officials say engineers have partially restored passenger rail service in southern Pakistan, a day after a passenger train derailed there, killing at least 30 people and injuring 90.

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan is now an inmate at a high-security prison after being convicted of corruption and sentenced to three years.

Ten cars of an express train derailed in southern Pakistan on Sunday, killing 30 people and injuring more than 90 others.

Egypt and other lower-income Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon and Pakistan are worried about what comes next after Russia pulled out of a crucial wartime grain deal.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has rejected a petition from former Prime Minister Imran Khan about halting his trial in a lingering case involving the concealing of assets after selling state gifts.

Pakistani police say a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest inside a roadside mosque when a police officer tried to arrest him after a chase in northwestern Pakistan, killing the officer.

The eleven-year-old daughter of a prominent Kashmiri rebel leader who faces life in prison in neighboring India has issued an emotional appeal, urging New Delhi to allow her to meet her father.

Police and rescue officials say 11 workers were killed after a portion of the outer wall of a sprawling building collapsed near an under-construction bridge on the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.

The International Monetary Fund has approved a much-awaited $3 billion bailout for Pakistan that likely will save the nation from defaulting on its debt repayments.

Thousands of Muslims in Pakistan have held protests to denounce last week’s burning of the Islamic holy book in Stockholm following a call by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to “send a strong message to Sweden.”.

Officials in Pakistan say the death toll from two weeks of monsoon rains rose to at least 55 on Thursday after at least 12 people, including eight children, died in weather-related incidents in Pakistan.

A new study says climate change is turning major snowfalls into more extreme rain over mountains, somehow worsening both dangerous flooding like the type that devastated Pakistan last year and long-term water shortages.

Pakistan’s military says it has fired three senior officers over their failure to prevent violent attacks on public property and military installations by supporters of the country's former prime minister.

Pakistani police say gunmen have shot and killed a member of Pakistan’s minority Sikh community in an overnight attack in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

India and Pakistan are bracing for the first severe cyclone this year expected to hit their coastal regions later this week.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan has taken his legal battle to a court in the capital, Islamabad.

Transgender activists in Pakistan say they plan to appeal an Islamic court’s ruling that guts a law aimed at protecting their rights.

As India prepares to host a meeting of tourism officials from the Group of 20 in the disputed region of Kashmir, authorities have deployed elite commandos and stepped up security in the region’s largest city.

Officials say a police officer tasked with protecting a private school for girls in northwestern Pakistan has opened fire at a school bus carrying teachers and students, killing an 8-year-old girl and injuring five others.

Pakistan’s prime minister says authorities will go after those involved in violent protests following the detention of his predecessor, Imran Khan, including prosecution in anti-terrorism courts.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan has left a high court in Islamabad after it granted him broad protection from arrest in multiple legal cases.

This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published by Associated Press photographers in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan in March 2023.

Economies across the Middle East and Central Asia will likely slow this year as persistently high inflation and rising interest rates bite into their post-pandemic gains.

Police say two explosions at a counterterrorism police facility in northwest Pakistan have killed at least 12 people and wounded at least 50.

A government spokesman says two roadside bombings targeting police vehicles in volatile southwestern Pakistan have killed four people and wounded 22.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ruled that a decision to delay provincial elections was unconstitutional.

Ramadan Mubarak!

The first daily fast of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan has begun.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins at sundown.

A report says 26% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to safe drinking water and 46% lacks access to basic sanitation.

The United Nations children’s agency says that after last summer’s devastating floods, 10 million people in Pakistan, including children, still live in flood-affected areas without access to safe drinking water.

Officials say Pakistan has launched its first-ever digital population and housing census to gather demographic data ahead of parliamentary elections this year.

Pakistan has lifted its ban on Wikipedia services that were blocked last week by the country’s media regulator for not removing purportedly blasphemous content that purportedly hurt the sentiments of Muslims.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has denounced activists who burned the Quran and hanged an effigy of Turkey’s president in Stockholm as “useful idiots” for foreign powers who want to inflict harm on the Scandinavian country as it seeks to join NATO.

The military says the death toll from a boating accident in a lake in northwest Pakistan over the weekend has reached 51.

A passenger bus has fallen off a bridge and caught fire, killing 40 people in the crash in southern Pakistan.

Angry protesters in several Middle Eastern countries have gathered to denounce the recent desecration of Islam’s holy book by far-right activists in Sweden and the Netherlands.

A report by the United Nations shows growing numbers of people in Asia lack enough to eat as food insecurity rises with higher prices and worsening poverty.

Officials say most of Pakistan was struck by a power outage as an energy-saving measure by the government backfired.

A British-based medical journal says Pakistan has made progress over infectious diseases but now struggles against cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer as causes of early deaths.

Pakistan is launching its first anti-polio campaign of the year, targeting more than 44 million children under the age of five.

Pakistan’s prime minister says that the United Arab Emirates agreed to extend a $2 billion loan to his country and provide a additional $1 billion as his nation struggles to recover from devastating floods this summer and a dire economic crisis.

This past year has seen a horrific flood that submerged one-third of Pakistan, one of the three costliest U.S. hurricanes on record, devastating droughts in Europe and China, a drought-triggered famine in Africa and deadly heat waves all over.

Negotiators have approved an historic deal to create a fund for compensating poor nations that are victims of extreme weather worsened by rich countries’ carbon pollution.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan has urged his followers to resume their protest march on the country’s capital to demand early elections — even though he is staying out of the march, for now.