05/23/2013 13:22 GMT

QUETTA, Pakistan, May 23, 2013 (AFP) - A bomb planted in a rickshaw tore through a truck used by security forces in southwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 13 people, police said.

The remotely detonated bomb containing around 100 kg (220 pounds) of explosives targeted a truck carrying members of a government paramilitary force on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of restive Baluchistan province.

KARACHI, May 22 2013 (IPS) - Staring out at his golden wheat field with satisfaction, 50-year old Alamgir Akbar says with a sigh of relief: “We’ve had a good crop this season.”

The farmer has waited a long time to utter those words. A resident of a small rural community on the outskirts of the Ucchali village in the Soan Valley, a 737-square-metre expanse of farmland in the Khushab district of Pakistan’s Punjab province, he has spent five years battling the impacts of a prolonged drought.

Peshawar – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) today handed over medical and information technology equipment worth over 7.4 million rupees to the Health Department, Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The donation is designed to boost the quality of nutrition and healthcare services provided in seven key Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, and includes weighing scales, delivery tables, oxygen cylinders and emergency lights, as well as computers and printers.

Weather forecasters are already predicting above-normal rainfall and in some areas standing water has yet to drain away from last year’s monsoon. After three years of destruction, how ready is the country for the monsoon?

Barkat is 80 years old. He and his wife were home in the village of Shand in Pakistan when the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit the region of Mashkail last month. They lost everything, their belongings and their house. They were forced to live in the open air as Barkat did not have the energy to build a shelter. They were exposed to the elements as well as insects. They were about to lose hope when Balochistan Rural Support Programme (BRSP) found them and gave them a ShelterBox disaster relief tent.

SRINAGAR, May 18 2013 (IPS) - Aadil Khan and his two siblings had been playing as usual behind their house in the village of Diver, 110 kilometres north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, when they came across what they thought was a “plaything” laying on the ground. But no sooner had they picked the object up than it literally shattered their innocent lives into pieces.

05/17/2013 15:22 GMT

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 17, 2013 (AFP) - Twin bomb attacks on Friday killed at least 13 people outside mosques in northwest Pakistan, where the party of cricket star Imran Khan is forming a coalition government, officials said.

The blasts targeted the two mosques in the Baazdara area of northwestern Malakand region, senior local administration official Amjad Ali Khan told AFP.

"The two blasts killed at least 13 people and wounded 48 others," Khan said. "Eight of the injured people are in a critical condition," he added.

LAHORE/DUBAI, 17 May 2013 (IRIN) - Hamza Mazhar, a 35-year-old teacher from Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, says he never wants to see the inside of a government hospital again.

“My mother was taken to the hospital with an upper respiratory tract infection in February this year and doctors said she needed care in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU),” he told IRIN.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan [ACTED News] - Around 8,000 families (48,000 individuals) have been displaced in the past week due to tension within Central Kurrram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Pakistan. The twenty-nine affected villages of Para Chamkani were declared as conflict zones by national authorities, which enables the families from that area to register for assistance. Most of the displaced families have moved to lower parts of Kurram Agency such as Khar, Khazi Khel and Palash Khel, where they are now living without basic food and health facilities.