A blast tore through a mosque on Friday in northwestern Pakistan, police said, injuring an Islamist party leader and three others, including children.

Abdullah Nadeem, a local leader of the Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) political party, was believed to be the target of the blast and had been hospitalised with serious injuries, said Asif Bahadar, a district police chief in South Waziristan. He said two children were among the injured.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the explosion.

Attacks have been escalating in Pakistan’s border regions with Afghanistan in recent months.

Last month, a suicide bomber killed six worshippers during Friday prayers at an Islamic seminary in northwestern Pakistan.

This week in southwestern Balochistan, separatist militants hijacked a train and held passengers hostage in a day-long standoff with security forces.

Pakistan has vowed to crack down on growing militancy and has said the militants are finding safe haven in neighbouring Afghanistan, a charge the Islamic Emirate denies.

(Reuters)

Syria kept a central role for Islamic law in a constitutional declaration issued on Thursday which guarantees women’s rights and freedom of expression during a five-year transitional period, according to a summary read on TV.

The declaration is designed to serve as the foundation for the interim period being led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a Sunni Islamist who spearheaded a lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad from power in December, Reuters reported.

Islamic jurisprudence will be “the main source” of legislation, according to the summary read out during the signing ceremony. That seemed to differ from the previous constitution which called it “a main source” of legislation.

“We have kept Islamic jurisprudence as the primary source of legislation among sources of legislation,” said the summary, read out by a member of the committee which drafted the declaration. “This jurisprudence is a true treasure that should not be squandered,” it said.

Sharaa, who has promised to run Syria in an inclusive way, has been grappling with the biggest test of his leadership in the wake of a wave of sectarian killing in the coastal region, blamed on fighters aligned with his government.

He appointed the committee to draft the declaration less than two weeks ago.

The declaration guarantees women’s “right to education and participation in work, and guaranteed them political rights” and provides “for freedom of opinion, expression, media, publication and the press,” according to the summary.

“We hope that this will be a good start for the Syrian people on the path of construction and development,” Sharaa said in televised remarks during the signing ceremony.

Sharaa in February said it would take four to five years to hold a presidential election.

Syria’s previous constitution, which became law in 2012, was suspended in January.

Pakistani security forces stormed a train on Wednesday that had been hijacked by separatist militants, killing all 33 attackers and ending a day-long standoff involving hundreds of hostages, the military said.

Separatist Baloch militants on Tuesday blew up the railway track and hurled rockets at the Jaffar Express when it was on its way to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from Balochistan’s capital of Quetta, carrying 440 people.

The military said 21 hostages and four security troops were killed over the course of the standoff.

“Today we freed a large number of people, including women and children … The final operation was carried out with great care,” military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said, adding that no civilians were killed in the final stage of the operation.

Before the army announcement, the Baloch Liberation Army, which claimed the attack, said it had killed 50 passengers on Wednesday evening.

It had said on Tuesday that it was holding 214 people, mostly security personnel. It had threatened to start executing hostages unless authorities met its 48-hour deadline for the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing people it says had been abducted by the military.

The BLA is the largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

The militants have in recent months stepped up their activities using new tactics to inflict high death and injury tolls and target Pakistan’s military.

Baloch militant groups say they have been fighting for a larger share in the regional wealth of mines and minerals denied by the central government.

Junior Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry told Geo television earlier on Wednesday that militants were wearing suicide vests as they sat among the passengers held hostage, complicating the rescue attempt.

He said 70-80 attackers had hijacked the train.

The military sent in hundreds of troops and also deployed the airforce and special forces to tackle the militants, Chaudhry said.

In the final phase of the operation, he said special forces first took out the suicide bombers before troops went from carriage to carriage to kill the rest of the militants. He did not give a number of those rescued in this phase of the operation and it was not immediately clear how or to where the passengers would be evacuated.

The train driver and several others had already been killed, officials said earlier, before the army statement.

Government officials had said earlier, also before the army statement, that 190 of those on board had already been rescued, with more than 50 taken to Quetta to be reunited with their loved ones.

Muhammad Ashraf, 75, who was travelling on the train, said he heard a loud explosion in the mountainous area, which shook all the carriages.

“We lay on the floor once heavy firing started. Shortly after, armed men entered the train and checked our identities,” he said in Quetta.

A security official had told Reuters that the armed men were looking for soldiers and security personnel.

A woman, who said her son was among the passengers still waiting to be freed, confronted provincial minister Mir Zahoor Buledi. “Why didn’t you stop the trains if they were not safe?” she said.

Buledi told reporters the government was working to beef up security in the region.